Amen.

@OwlInASack - An excellent and overly apt read.

@OwlInASack for those of us who live here already, fantasizing about moving elsewhere definitely has its appeal. Then I remember that U.S., in the wrong hands, still has the power to torch the planet. We are too influential. Abandonment is not a complete solution. Someone has to stay here and fight!
I don't blame you for keeping your distance, though. Even so. We can see signs of the same nationalist sickness in the UK and elsewhere. It should not be lost on us that many nationalists zealously tout religion to justify their xenophobic bigotry through delusional interpretations of their make believe "word of god."

@OwlInASack exactly. Your mention of Germany makes me sad. I was an exchange student there ages ago...1985 to '86. There were still at that time a good number of senior folks who remembered Hitler and, when drunk, would forget any sense of diplomacy and publicly, drunkenly, wax nostalgic about how "great" Germany was under the Nazis. Everyone around would just roll their eyes or look uncomfortable. But it seems nationalist sentiment is easy to propagate with b.s. propaganda but slow and complicated to eradicate. Trump is a veritable geyser of bullshit. He lies like it's breathing, and it is either bragging about himself, demonizing scapegoats or buttering up whatever audience he is duping at the moment. His performances are so over the top disgusting that, even after 2 years of it, I am stunned that millions of people swallow his shit whole. Utterly appalling. I keep clinging to hope that America....the half that isn't insane....will claw its way back to decency again. We are a deeply polarized nation, and I directly blame the convergence of corporate greed, rampant materialism, and mindless, bigoted Puritan religious tradition that our society is rooted in. A toxic witch's brew.
I was so impressed by Germany's government response to the Syrian refugee crisis and ashamed at the U.S.'s hands-off reaction. But helping people in crisis does indeed require some sacrifice, and there are so many who never want any sacrifice for themselves. Germany's good deed ended up being more fuel for their own nationalist uprising. ?

@MikeInBatonRouge, @OwlInASack - My original attribution was incorrect, as far as I can find. It appears to be a construct and misattribution, combining a paragraph from Mein Kampf with a paragraph from the United States Office of Strategic Services report centering on Hitler's psychological profile.

@DoDapper ok, noted.

@OwlInASack

I doubt he knows it, but like the lemmings myth, our culture has driven itself into the frenzy that precipitated the fall. After all, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana).

Add in a couple key sections of "The Prince", Machiavelli's tribute to the Medicis, and I could truly call myself terrified. I could however see some Trump as a misappropriation of misappropriated Marx. These day, it is hardly like we cite sources or cite them accurate to context if we do.

@DoDapper I disagree.. The Drumpf were involved with G.A Bunde..so there a good chance he knows exactly what he's doing.

@Charlene - Touche'd.

@Charlene , @Eldovis - My original attribution was incorrect, as far as I can find. It appears to be a construct and misattribution, combining a paragraph from Mein Kampf with a paragraph from the United States Office of Strategic Services report centering on Hitler's psychological profile.

Sehr gut, ja?

My original attribution was incorrect, as far as I can find. It appears to be a construct and misattribution, combining a paragraph from Mein Kampf with a paragraph from the United States Office of Strategic Services report centering on Hitler's psychological profile.

@DoDapper Thanks for putting the effort in and clarifying.

I was told, for a brief period after the 2016 election, Ireland was accepting American refugees. I think we missed our boat.

@DoDapper I don't have a drop of Irish blood. I don't think they'd have me!

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana).

"Hence it comes that all armed prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed prophets have been destroyed" (Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince).

@coralisthree - (Note, though, that "The Prince" was note Machiavelli's personal values so much as a mildly tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Medici family to avoid his own condemnation and execution. The phrase "Machiavellian" misrepresents the man.)

@dan325 - As is George Santayana, a staple of Harvard philosophy's golden age, with other popular, often misattributed and misquoted aphorisms, such as "Only the dead have seen the end of war." (Though that one's misattribution has the dubious honor of being General MacArthur's error.)