I read rise and fall of the third reich when I was 9-10. Hitler seemed normal to a lot of Germans then, even quite a few followers of the great Rudolf Steiner. I've heard that Ivana Trump, a woman of Czech descent, said Trump read Hitler on their honeymoon. He was tutored in law by Roy Cohn, chief henchman of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose red-menace witchhunts in the early 1950s ruined many lives. He is pathologically unable to accept when he is wrong. And the Heritage Foundation and others are preparing detailed plans to put their friends in key positions in Defense, intelligence agencies, and Justice. I've watched the video: Trump says on a friendly program he'll be dictator for the first day. Well that's when you do whatever's necessary to shut down opposition for all the rest of the days. I'm concerned that you want us to take a grain of salt when you expect Trump to be president again.
PS: - "Scum" you clear off a lake; "vermin" you exterminate. Believe what people say they will do.
Hey John - thanks for your response. So two questions about it. One: "Believe what people say they will do." Really? Politicians? I just have such a hard time wrapping my head around that. Doesn't every politician just make promise after promise that they then don't keep? I guess I just don't even know what that means.
For instance: Biden said he'd never build another foot of the wall, and look where we are today. And Trump? It seemed like every major news outlet during his presidency just tallied his lies and said you can't believe anything he said. But now it's "He's saying exactly what he'll do, pay attention!"... Really? I mean, "Lock her up," "Drain the swamp," and "Build the wall" were his three big promises in 2016. How did those go?
And do you actually think he means that he's going to destroy his opposition in a single day? And do you think he could? Do you really think Trump is that capable? It's hard for me to imagine, but I guess maybe we check back in on Day 2...
But here's my second, and main, question: Do you think that everything he says and does IS a five alarm fire, or do you think the media is blowing some things out of proportion? Thanks for sharing your thoughts and hope you're well.
Let me start by adding that I have had an interest since childhood in the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic, and recently went through a long podcast on the subject. It was the abandonment of traditional "mores" that held the Republic together for so long, and it began to come apart when one group of senators saw that oligarchic tendencies meant a decline in the well being and civic spirit of the lower class of citizens. They wanted to fix that, and eventually forced changes which the other group of senators naturally resisted. Violence ensued and men with armies behind them began to force decisions. The last of these was Gaius Julius Caesar, and from there Rome was a republic in name only.
A key cultural difference was that in the Republic citizens had learned to speak well publicly to express their own viewpoints, and play a role in public life; in the Empire speech became nothing but a tool of flattery and winning favor with one man. Compare this with Mitt Romney's recent revelation that he pays a million dollars a year for family security, and that some other GOP senators would have voted to impeach Trump for January 6th but were afraid, and cautioned by colleagues, that their families would be in danger.
Well, back to a key thought: "Doesn't every politician just make promise after promise that they then don't keep?" Tony Robbins called out this rhetorical problem of naive generalization: "Every? Every politician? Every promise?" Really, Seth, these are feelings talking, not thought. And that's why you, a very very good thinker in my experience, have "such a hard time wrapping my head around that." You experience a feeling of betrayal from politics generally -- a feeling that has been carefully cultivated for decades, at least since Ronald Reagan turned Lincoln on his head (as Marx did with Hegel) by transforming "government of the people, by the people, for the people" into "government is the problem." And once we got on social media, this absolute alienation from government could be pursued -- for profit -- by all kinds of truth-free hucksters.
There IS an alienation from government, but it needs to be -- and could be -- bridged in our modern era by having the best technology linking every one of us two-ways to every public servant at every level. But some people benefit from the betrayal feeling. The "stab in the back" idea that Germany didn't really win World War I -- that the Jews, and Helmuth von Moltke, and Rudolf Steiner had betrayed Germany -- was essential to the rise of Hitler. Then the economic disaster of grotesque reparations and the great depression that followed sealed the deal emotionally. The left of course was also crazy and sometimes violent in Germany, but the "betrayed" veterans became the violent core for Hitler's NSWP. Notice how the 2nd Amendment was turned around in this country, and the NRA shifted from gun safety to gun ownership sales promotion, and now we have "stochastic terrorism": DT and his "crazy" circle like Giuliani can say something outrageous, maybe about two women poll workers in Georgia, and people come and threaten them in their homes.
Now the political process, the process of governing, requires compromise and collaboration between/among different viewpoints. As long as these views are held with integrity, and the participants feel some respect each other, the campaign promises which are about directions get turned into actual policies which both sides can live with. So Biden lets some money be wasted on border walls, that is a sop to those who campaigned on fear/anxiety about immigration. (An emotional and racist and short-sighted issue, by the way, since the aging of our workforce and unwillingness to do some backbreaking jobs and need for best tech talent all argue for substantial immigration -- which we are not going to get from our old race-favored European sources.)
But what is Biden's big commitment? "To rebuild the middle class from the bottom up and the center out." Why don't you explore what he's done there? It's huge. And it hasn't just been directed toward people who voted for him. Trump talked infrastructure every month of his term until Covid hit, and when he had the votes to do it, nothing, and later when Democrats would have helped, nothing, zero, nada. Biden? Massive infrastructure. Some millions for border wall sops? Big deal. Hundred of billions for rebuilding roads and dams and water infrastructure and energy infrastructure. Unfortunately for German, the social governments of the 1920s couldn't make that happen.
Trump? "Lock her up"? -- by which he meant the unAmerican habit of judicial assault on your political opponents, well he couldn't do it, there was no case there against Hilary Clinton. "Drain the swamp"? -- he couldn't do it, though he started to learn how to use acting positions to get into place his fanatics who couldn't have gotten Senate approval. "Build the wall" -- not even his own party really supported him on that.
The real Trump I priorities were 1) nail down the evangelical base, people who should have despised him for the moral degenerate which he is, with Supreme Court appointments, and 2) pay back the GOP's billionaire and corporate owners with massive tax cuts. Both those promises were kept, bigly.
So both Biden and Trump actually kept their real promises -- but not, especially in Trump's case, their slogans. Someone who is going to give public commentary on the social scene needs to be able to distinguish between these two. Rudolf Steiner was masterful in describing the real underlying interests that were in place in his time -- which is part of the reason he was savaged and driven off the stage by the Hitlerites' violence.
Five alarm fire? Once again you do the naive generalization -- "Do you think everything he says and does IS a five alarm fire...?" Everything? Everything? No, his cheating at golf is not a national emergency. But the rhetorical tactic of all / everything / nothing / never / always -- the parading of absolutes -- is a way to shut down conversations, not to shed light. You want to make me work like hell to answer you, while you have had so say nothing except "everything"? Understood?
And also when you say "the media" just what the hell do you mean? I spend as much time now on TikTok, because so much of Gen-Z is there, as I do with the media I grew up with. I'm a crusty old coot now, but I learned decades ago how to winnow out useful information from the New York Times etc. I know that they and the Washington Post are "establishment" organs -- they really won't support any fundamental critique of the capitalist system. They also stopped Richard Nixon, who adopted the philosophy that "when the President does it, it's not a crime."
That's my issue with Trump. He can't accept defeat. He was preparing Jan 6th months before the 2020 election. After the election he pushed out his own Attorney General and Secretary of Defense and in Defense put people in place who would support a military takeover on his behalf. If you are clear about this, you aren't paying enough attention.
I wish there were a better word than "narcissism" which means he can't share other people feelings and he can't let anyone else make decisions and he lies, lies, lies until we all lose our sense of truth. He is so much like the early Roman emperors. "It's all about me, me, me." And paranoid. He is a terribly damaged person, as was Adolf Schicklgruber. And he has a fantastic honesty about some things, like being turned on by his daughter. Once people get used to the smell, he seems candid. And his defensive arrogance makes him look strong.
Trump didn't expect to win in 2016. His fixer said the campaign was brand marketing. Beat the Clintons, how? In 2024 he needs desperately to win, to stop the federal prosecutions. And he knows now that there is a constituency for a strong man.
I love the German contributions to culture; I listen to Beethoven, a heroic lonely man full of love and generosity, every day when I write. I love the real spirit of the American Revolution, with Washington's renunciation of kingship or dictatorship, and the cultural revolution of the Emerson crowd, and Lincoln's renewal of the Declaration of Independence, and Teddy Roosevelt and LaFollette and Wilson as trustbusters, and Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms of belief and expression and from want and fear "everywhere in the world"...
Just as there were murders in the Balkans leading up to World War I, four extraordinary individuals were murdered between 1963 and 1968 in order to shift the USA onto the path of Empire.
But it is not too late to keep the American Republic, Seth. We must just clarify our vision, purify our rhetoric, and trusting tell each other what we see and what we hope for.
Hey Karen - a reader did warn me that there are AI technologies out there that allow scammers to duplicate your voice, even if you just speak with them for a little bit. They said something like "I would prey for them, but I wouldn't talk to them." I googled it and did find some articles that touched on such technologies (it seemed like one of the main worries was that they could then use your voice to scam someone else - a friend or family member), but I didn't look far enough into all of it to really say much more. Anyways, just though I'd mention it as a caution. Cheers!
Hey John - I really appreciate your engagement with the article, but in this last post you seemed to get a bit personal in your attacks ("Someone who is going to give public commentary on the social scene needs to be able to distinguish between these two..." "Once again you do the naive generalization…" and I think at one point you said I wasn't "paying enough attention"?) Anyways, I'm all about going at the ideas with gusto, but I'm not interested in going at each other. Hope that makes sense. Thanks.
Also, I don't mean to be overly critical, but your post is long. I remember hearing that Goethe once wrote something in a letter like "Sorry this letter is so long, I didn't have time to write less." It takes time to go back over things and edit them down, but it makes it a lot easier on me, and anyone else who reads this in the future. Also, it would just be a lot easier for us to see where our real differences are, and then maybe we can find our way through them and come to some new perspectives.
It seems like most of your post is trying to convince me that Trump is bad news, and is similar, in ways, to Hitler and the worst of the Roman emperors. You definitely won't find me defending Trump - in my article I called him weird, snarly, vulgar, and incoherent - so I'm not sure if we need to spend much time on that topic. There doesn't seem to be much of a disagreement there.
The point of my article was that the mainstream media is doing what you accused me of doing - overly generalizing. (And I'm not sure if you wanted me to define what I meant by the media, but I just meant what you said in your post - the "establishment," or legacy media, the NYT, WP, Atlantic, etc). I was claiming that their stories about Trump don't have any nuance, that everything seems to be a maximalist freak out - a "five alarm fire." And I was pointing out that, on the one hand, it isn't helpful (it creates exhaustion and a general distrust - the boy who cried wolf syndrome) and on the other hand, it's not really true. When you read these articles and follow the links, Trump's language isn't actually clear and authoritarian - he doesn't say I'm going to be a dictator when I'm president, but I'll be a dictator for a single day (I just find that so weird and wishy-washy...), and he's not "vowing" to go after his political opponents as the NYT said at one point, but that he might do the same thing to them that they're doing to him.
I experience Trump as all shiftiness and insinuation. But the media tries to paint him like he's a would-be dictator articulating a clear agenda and we should take him at his word.
Anyways, I'm more interested in trying to sort out what parts of Trump we need to take seriously and what's just gobbledygook. I think we need to develop a much more nuanced approach to him so we can differentiate the actual fire from the smoke and mirrors. That's my point. And because you seemed to disagree with my article, I asked you, "Do you think that everything he says and does IS a five alarm fire, or do you think the media is blowing some things out of proportion?" I was trying to ask: Is everything black and white as the media is portraying it, or is there some grey in there? I was arguing against generalizations.
So, I don't know if you have any thoughts on what would be a healthy, measured, strategic approach to understanding Trump in the future. Maybe you think the media is doing a great job, or maybe you think their (and our) approach could be improved in ways. That's what I'm interested in looking at if you have any thoughts. Thanks.
Nice job on a tempered response to a comment that I was only able to get 3/4 of the way through. You’re right. Where hype and drama are concerned, mainstream media is worse than any middle school preteen girl I’ve come across in my years. It’s not accidental.
Yeah. The binary, either/or approach really has this country (and I'm assuming most of the world) by the throat. "You're either with us or against us." It seems like it's going to be a hard pattern to break out of.
As always, thanks for your engagement with this work, Joan. Much appreciated. Hope you're well!
I read rise and fall of the third reich when I was 9-10. Hitler seemed normal to a lot of Germans then, even quite a few followers of the great Rudolf Steiner. I've heard that Ivana Trump, a woman of Czech descent, said Trump read Hitler on their honeymoon. He was tutored in law by Roy Cohn, chief henchman of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose red-menace witchhunts in the early 1950s ruined many lives. He is pathologically unable to accept when he is wrong. And the Heritage Foundation and others are preparing detailed plans to put their friends in key positions in Defense, intelligence agencies, and Justice. I've watched the video: Trump says on a friendly program he'll be dictator for the first day. Well that's when you do whatever's necessary to shut down opposition for all the rest of the days. I'm concerned that you want us to take a grain of salt when you expect Trump to be president again.
PS: - "Scum" you clear off a lake; "vermin" you exterminate. Believe what people say they will do.
Hey John - thanks for your response. So two questions about it. One: "Believe what people say they will do." Really? Politicians? I just have such a hard time wrapping my head around that. Doesn't every politician just make promise after promise that they then don't keep? I guess I just don't even know what that means.
For instance: Biden said he'd never build another foot of the wall, and look where we are today. And Trump? It seemed like every major news outlet during his presidency just tallied his lies and said you can't believe anything he said. But now it's "He's saying exactly what he'll do, pay attention!"... Really? I mean, "Lock her up," "Drain the swamp," and "Build the wall" were his three big promises in 2016. How did those go?
And do you actually think he means that he's going to destroy his opposition in a single day? And do you think he could? Do you really think Trump is that capable? It's hard for me to imagine, but I guess maybe we check back in on Day 2...
But here's my second, and main, question: Do you think that everything he says and does IS a five alarm fire, or do you think the media is blowing some things out of proportion? Thanks for sharing your thoughts and hope you're well.
Let me start by adding that I have had an interest since childhood in the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic, and recently went through a long podcast on the subject. It was the abandonment of traditional "mores" that held the Republic together for so long, and it began to come apart when one group of senators saw that oligarchic tendencies meant a decline in the well being and civic spirit of the lower class of citizens. They wanted to fix that, and eventually forced changes which the other group of senators naturally resisted. Violence ensued and men with armies behind them began to force decisions. The last of these was Gaius Julius Caesar, and from there Rome was a republic in name only.
A key cultural difference was that in the Republic citizens had learned to speak well publicly to express their own viewpoints, and play a role in public life; in the Empire speech became nothing but a tool of flattery and winning favor with one man. Compare this with Mitt Romney's recent revelation that he pays a million dollars a year for family security, and that some other GOP senators would have voted to impeach Trump for January 6th but were afraid, and cautioned by colleagues, that their families would be in danger.
Well, back to a key thought: "Doesn't every politician just make promise after promise that they then don't keep?" Tony Robbins called out this rhetorical problem of naive generalization: "Every? Every politician? Every promise?" Really, Seth, these are feelings talking, not thought. And that's why you, a very very good thinker in my experience, have "such a hard time wrapping my head around that." You experience a feeling of betrayal from politics generally -- a feeling that has been carefully cultivated for decades, at least since Ronald Reagan turned Lincoln on his head (as Marx did with Hegel) by transforming "government of the people, by the people, for the people" into "government is the problem." And once we got on social media, this absolute alienation from government could be pursued -- for profit -- by all kinds of truth-free hucksters.
There IS an alienation from government, but it needs to be -- and could be -- bridged in our modern era by having the best technology linking every one of us two-ways to every public servant at every level. But some people benefit from the betrayal feeling. The "stab in the back" idea that Germany didn't really win World War I -- that the Jews, and Helmuth von Moltke, and Rudolf Steiner had betrayed Germany -- was essential to the rise of Hitler. Then the economic disaster of grotesque reparations and the great depression that followed sealed the deal emotionally. The left of course was also crazy and sometimes violent in Germany, but the "betrayed" veterans became the violent core for Hitler's NSWP. Notice how the 2nd Amendment was turned around in this country, and the NRA shifted from gun safety to gun ownership sales promotion, and now we have "stochastic terrorism": DT and his "crazy" circle like Giuliani can say something outrageous, maybe about two women poll workers in Georgia, and people come and threaten them in their homes.
Now the political process, the process of governing, requires compromise and collaboration between/among different viewpoints. As long as these views are held with integrity, and the participants feel some respect each other, the campaign promises which are about directions get turned into actual policies which both sides can live with. So Biden lets some money be wasted on border walls, that is a sop to those who campaigned on fear/anxiety about immigration. (An emotional and racist and short-sighted issue, by the way, since the aging of our workforce and unwillingness to do some backbreaking jobs and need for best tech talent all argue for substantial immigration -- which we are not going to get from our old race-favored European sources.)
But what is Biden's big commitment? "To rebuild the middle class from the bottom up and the center out." Why don't you explore what he's done there? It's huge. And it hasn't just been directed toward people who voted for him. Trump talked infrastructure every month of his term until Covid hit, and when he had the votes to do it, nothing, and later when Democrats would have helped, nothing, zero, nada. Biden? Massive infrastructure. Some millions for border wall sops? Big deal. Hundred of billions for rebuilding roads and dams and water infrastructure and energy infrastructure. Unfortunately for German, the social governments of the 1920s couldn't make that happen.
Trump? "Lock her up"? -- by which he meant the unAmerican habit of judicial assault on your political opponents, well he couldn't do it, there was no case there against Hilary Clinton. "Drain the swamp"? -- he couldn't do it, though he started to learn how to use acting positions to get into place his fanatics who couldn't have gotten Senate approval. "Build the wall" -- not even his own party really supported him on that.
The real Trump I priorities were 1) nail down the evangelical base, people who should have despised him for the moral degenerate which he is, with Supreme Court appointments, and 2) pay back the GOP's billionaire and corporate owners with massive tax cuts. Both those promises were kept, bigly.
So both Biden and Trump actually kept their real promises -- but not, especially in Trump's case, their slogans. Someone who is going to give public commentary on the social scene needs to be able to distinguish between these two. Rudolf Steiner was masterful in describing the real underlying interests that were in place in his time -- which is part of the reason he was savaged and driven off the stage by the Hitlerites' violence.
Five alarm fire? Once again you do the naive generalization -- "Do you think everything he says and does IS a five alarm fire...?" Everything? Everything? No, his cheating at golf is not a national emergency. But the rhetorical tactic of all / everything / nothing / never / always -- the parading of absolutes -- is a way to shut down conversations, not to shed light. You want to make me work like hell to answer you, while you have had so say nothing except "everything"? Understood?
And also when you say "the media" just what the hell do you mean? I spend as much time now on TikTok, because so much of Gen-Z is there, as I do with the media I grew up with. I'm a crusty old coot now, but I learned decades ago how to winnow out useful information from the New York Times etc. I know that they and the Washington Post are "establishment" organs -- they really won't support any fundamental critique of the capitalist system. They also stopped Richard Nixon, who adopted the philosophy that "when the President does it, it's not a crime."
That's my issue with Trump. He can't accept defeat. He was preparing Jan 6th months before the 2020 election. After the election he pushed out his own Attorney General and Secretary of Defense and in Defense put people in place who would support a military takeover on his behalf. If you are clear about this, you aren't paying enough attention.
I wish there were a better word than "narcissism" which means he can't share other people feelings and he can't let anyone else make decisions and he lies, lies, lies until we all lose our sense of truth. He is so much like the early Roman emperors. "It's all about me, me, me." And paranoid. He is a terribly damaged person, as was Adolf Schicklgruber. And he has a fantastic honesty about some things, like being turned on by his daughter. Once people get used to the smell, he seems candid. And his defensive arrogance makes him look strong.
Trump didn't expect to win in 2016. His fixer said the campaign was brand marketing. Beat the Clintons, how? In 2024 he needs desperately to win, to stop the federal prosecutions. And he knows now that there is a constituency for a strong man.
I love the German contributions to culture; I listen to Beethoven, a heroic lonely man full of love and generosity, every day when I write. I love the real spirit of the American Revolution, with Washington's renunciation of kingship or dictatorship, and the cultural revolution of the Emerson crowd, and Lincoln's renewal of the Declaration of Independence, and Teddy Roosevelt and LaFollette and Wilson as trustbusters, and Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms of belief and expression and from want and fear "everywhere in the world"...
Just as there were murders in the Balkans leading up to World War I, four extraordinary individuals were murdered between 1963 and 1968 in order to shift the USA onto the path of Empire.
But it is not too late to keep the American Republic, Seth. We must just clarify our vision, purify our rhetoric, and trusting tell each other what we see and what we hope for.
Best wishes to you of the season.
I just want to thank you for lending me a new view on the destiny of scammers. Slaves for others - just like some beggars I meet in the streets.
Hey Karen - a reader did warn me that there are AI technologies out there that allow scammers to duplicate your voice, even if you just speak with them for a little bit. They said something like "I would prey for them, but I wouldn't talk to them." I googled it and did find some articles that touched on such technologies (it seemed like one of the main worries was that they could then use your voice to scam someone else - a friend or family member), but I didn't look far enough into all of it to really say much more. Anyways, just though I'd mention it as a caution. Cheers!
I suppose it should be ‘pray’ instead of ‘prey’ ☺️
Hey John - I really appreciate your engagement with the article, but in this last post you seemed to get a bit personal in your attacks ("Someone who is going to give public commentary on the social scene needs to be able to distinguish between these two..." "Once again you do the naive generalization…" and I think at one point you said I wasn't "paying enough attention"?) Anyways, I'm all about going at the ideas with gusto, but I'm not interested in going at each other. Hope that makes sense. Thanks.
Also, I don't mean to be overly critical, but your post is long. I remember hearing that Goethe once wrote something in a letter like "Sorry this letter is so long, I didn't have time to write less." It takes time to go back over things and edit them down, but it makes it a lot easier on me, and anyone else who reads this in the future. Also, it would just be a lot easier for us to see where our real differences are, and then maybe we can find our way through them and come to some new perspectives.
It seems like most of your post is trying to convince me that Trump is bad news, and is similar, in ways, to Hitler and the worst of the Roman emperors. You definitely won't find me defending Trump - in my article I called him weird, snarly, vulgar, and incoherent - so I'm not sure if we need to spend much time on that topic. There doesn't seem to be much of a disagreement there.
The point of my article was that the mainstream media is doing what you accused me of doing - overly generalizing. (And I'm not sure if you wanted me to define what I meant by the media, but I just meant what you said in your post - the "establishment," or legacy media, the NYT, WP, Atlantic, etc). I was claiming that their stories about Trump don't have any nuance, that everything seems to be a maximalist freak out - a "five alarm fire." And I was pointing out that, on the one hand, it isn't helpful (it creates exhaustion and a general distrust - the boy who cried wolf syndrome) and on the other hand, it's not really true. When you read these articles and follow the links, Trump's language isn't actually clear and authoritarian - he doesn't say I'm going to be a dictator when I'm president, but I'll be a dictator for a single day (I just find that so weird and wishy-washy...), and he's not "vowing" to go after his political opponents as the NYT said at one point, but that he might do the same thing to them that they're doing to him.
I experience Trump as all shiftiness and insinuation. But the media tries to paint him like he's a would-be dictator articulating a clear agenda and we should take him at his word.
Anyways, I'm more interested in trying to sort out what parts of Trump we need to take seriously and what's just gobbledygook. I think we need to develop a much more nuanced approach to him so we can differentiate the actual fire from the smoke and mirrors. That's my point. And because you seemed to disagree with my article, I asked you, "Do you think that everything he says and does IS a five alarm fire, or do you think the media is blowing some things out of proportion?" I was trying to ask: Is everything black and white as the media is portraying it, or is there some grey in there? I was arguing against generalizations.
So, I don't know if you have any thoughts on what would be a healthy, measured, strategic approach to understanding Trump in the future. Maybe you think the media is doing a great job, or maybe you think their (and our) approach could be improved in ways. That's what I'm interested in looking at if you have any thoughts. Thanks.
Nice job on a tempered response to a comment that I was only able to get 3/4 of the way through. You’re right. Where hype and drama are concerned, mainstream media is worse than any middle school preteen girl I’ve come across in my years. It’s not accidental.
The condescending yes/no interrogation practices of mainstream media feed the fear and outrage. Thank you Seth
Yeah. The binary, either/or approach really has this country (and I'm assuming most of the world) by the throat. "You're either with us or against us." It seems like it's going to be a hard pattern to break out of.
As always, thanks for your engagement with this work, Joan. Much appreciated. Hope you're well!