The only Hitler analogy in today's politics that's actually useful and worth making

And it's not about who Hitler was or what he did --
it's about the way people perceived him as he rose to power on the shoulder of the Junkers (e.g. big donors)   It applies to Trump and Putin and Hitler and some others

And the point is that people didn't take Hitler seriously,
"Oh him? That man with the Charlie Chaplin mustache who yells a lot?"

It is almost by definition that the established, structurally powerful, moneyed classes become complacent, why else want all that money and power? 

-- so you DON'T have to be struggling all the time
-- they prefer to think ISIS is the big threat to their position.
 

(Robert Anton Wilson once said that the reason we see so many paranoid 

"they're coming up the hill to get us" movies is that the very rich movie producers all live up the hill and have Mexican gardeners and Costa Rican nannies and on some level perceive the disapproval of the people they employ, and in dark moments, wonder what would happen if...)

So they look at Trump and snicker in the clubs that he's crude and rude and crass and ... couldn't POSSIBLY  be serious.

They look at Putin and imagine that the stability, such as it is supposed to be,

 since WWII is "the way things should be" and therefore unchangeable.

They laugh at the idea that he'd take back Crimea despite installing an armored battalion for "security" at the no-snow winter Olympics --- (yeah, "take back" -- the Crimean war was about England and Germany and Sardinia wanting it, when the dynamics of Russia --  having access to only ONE year round unfreezing deep water port, said it was inevitable.)

We're not the only country run by megalomaniacs, not today with neocons, not in history with royalty.

And then... THEN! -- after Crimea -- to try to take back the Ukraine which seemed independent only since Kruschev gave them some rights, and which has had the fertile grain-growing land, and a milder climate --- in Europe, to get to really cold weather, the meteorologists know, "you go East, not North.)

The Ukraine was a wonderful buffer against ANOTHER possible invasion from Europe, 

(they had two in 150 years, the whole reason for grabbing the buffer countries -- Poland, Hungary, et al, to have more warning for the next time)

Ukraine, which we tried so hard to make them rise up and break away (when Nixon's people talked about not letting the "horror stories" get out, part of that was what the USA was doing in the Ukraine to agitate for separation) 
PUTIN!?! It's impossible! He would never do that! 

What about us? What about NATO?

But Putin, after all, a KGB East German chief for quite a few years and who therefore knows the difference between bluff and true monstrosity, Putin saw that Bush and Cheney had exhausted and destroyed our military on their personal projects in Iraq.
A man who tortures dissidents in secret knows -- as does a martial arts master, but without needing to torture) -- how ready someone is to actually fight. 

Putin is a man whose domestic system has to account for Chechen terrorists, and more... compared to an American comfort class which regards the war on Christmas as  apocalyptic disaster, or the lack of religious propaganda in schools a setup for god's wrath, and a government which is rife with the monstrous commies who would dare make sure every person (or as close to that as possible) has access to medical care.

Compared to Putin and Russia and the Chechens? --

think 10, 20, 50 Boston Marathon bombings a year.

And so, here's this short fellow (already a danger sign of possible hyper aggressiveness,

 and when his resume includes assassination and torture, we can pretty much assume he's one of THOSE short guys -- not all are overcompensating) a man who takes photos of himself that-- to us -- look like he's  the missing "Village People" act -- the cop, the construction guy, the Indian chief, etc ... and the buff bare-chested KGB assassin on a white horse...

And we laugh -- "But we have NATO! 

And we have nuclear weapons! 

And we have..."
 a military that has fallen apart from overuse without adequate R&R or equipment.

   
An infrastructure collapsing from pinchpenny politics...

So suddenly he's IN Eastern Ukraine and we're fiddling with his country's money,
but the people love him, because they've been crapped on internationally so long.

And he knows history -- knows it's been fewer than 100 years since a band of discontents took the royal family into a basement in Ekaterinaberg  and murdered them all.
 

Fewer than 100 years since, after WWI, the USA and England gathered together the rest of the allies and tried to invade Russia by sea at Archangel -- and the exhausted, depleted, Russians pushed them all back into the Baltic. 

A military venture only slightly less successful than the Invasion at the bay of Pigs.

But OUR Junkers laugh because he's such a little Clown

Same with Trump -- oh really, he's not serious... 

he has no ideas, just over and over and over again how great I am how important I am how rich I am...and all the gold and the women and how smart I am to have so much...

But he's new and shiny and they can't quite figure him out... and all the rest are treading the water in the pool of how it useta be...

Henry VIII said it to Sir Thomas Moore in the movie Man For All Seasons ---
"Look at them, they're following me. Some want wealth., Some want power.  Some want property. But most of them follow me because I'm moving and they'll follow anything that moves."

Hello Donald Trump.

The Germans laughed at Hitler -- the Berliners despised him as a sort of Donald Trump -- lower class, crude, socially embarrassing, no more than an enlisted man in WWI 

(so what if he was one of the only ones who ever won an Iron Cross) they despised him.

"Ich bin ein Berliner"
he may have said it wrong but they knew what JFK meant, that they''d been eating shit on an international level since 1945, after the war. 
And he knew the Berliners never kissed up to him.

And was telling them he knew it.

As for Dr. Carson -- he's a liberal's nightmare -- a Jewish liberal's nightmare 

-- an African American neurosurgeon (Yaay!)

with the social policies of a redneck with a 3rd grade education (Boo!) 

Cognitive dissonance.
Kind of like when Sarah Silverman joked about being raped, and as a Jewish woman, how difficult it was to deal with, her rapist being a doctor.

And now they're all coming down the road and we're all watching tv shows about Zombie Apocalypse. And yammering about how Hillary Clinton isn't good-timey enough. 

In 2008, my wife asked me, enamored of Obama and Michelle as I was

("If a woman like THAT loves a man like him, he must be even better than I think.") 
And she asked me: "What if Hillary wins?" 

And she was surprised when I said: "She'd be a very good president." 

And when I noticed her surprise I said: "I just like him more. Doesn't mean she wouldn't be great."


Still feel the same about her -- extraordinarily intelligent, experienced, capable.

When last she went up before one of the interminable Republican Slut-shaming Benghazi committees -- the one being run by America's favorite home-grown Arab terrorist and car thief, Darrell Issa -- and got his Mommy-Hate voice asking her why there were so few Marines protecting the Embassy.  I was impressed by the complexity of her mind in which she explained host country rules, treaties, job description of the Marines,et al.

Of course Mr Issa didn't seem able to follow her explanation point by point. 

Compared to the Republican offerings, she's the Queen of Heaven:


A TV reality show host? 

A black neurosurgeon to replace the serial-rapist Dr. Huxtable who betrayed our fantasies?  

A businesswoman whose viciousness required a gender change from old Joe Kennedy's "All businessmen are sonsofbitches" to similar sounding, with proper syllables for meter, "They're all spawnsofbitches."  

A pair of Cubanos -- Rubio and Cruz -- because Republicans think all Latinos are the same, they don't realize that many many Chicanos (Mexican-Americans), maybe even most -- DESPISE Cubanos because of the disparaging way the Cubanos have always treated them (those in the USA having money, education, and all the other benefits Batista and his band of torturing murderers could provide). 

And JEB (Jerkoff Extra Brother) who seems destined to prove that big money actually can not buy an election, at least when the last one with that name screwed the pooch beyond belief. 
And some other guys.

An historical point -- 

Neither George Washington, John Adams, nor Thomas Jefferson,et al were "the kind of guys you'd have a beer with." 

They were serious people.

That's the reason we remember them, as compared to some more recent presidents we'd really like to forget