Categorized | Daily Question
Daily Question
by BeyondGoodAndEvil
Posted on 13 December 2009 | 10:40 am 
Print This Post
What parallels do you see between America today and Germany in the very early 1930s?
Specifically, I mean the Weimar Republic of Germany, not Nazi Germany.
Are there any?
Chris Hedges, a Pullitzer prize winning author has an interesting take on the Weimarization of America:
“As the pressure mounts, as this despair and desperation reaches into larger and larger segments of the American populace, the mechanisms of corporate and government control are being bolstered to prevent civil unrest and instability. It is not accidental that with the rise of the corporate state comes the rise of the security state. This is why the Bush White House has pushed through the Patriot Act (and its renewal), the suspension of habeas corpus, the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” the warrantless wiretapping on American citizens and the refusal to ensure free and fair elections with verifiable ballot-counting. It is part of a package. It comes together. It is not about terrorism or national security. It is about control. It is about their control of us.
He goes on…
“the number of subprime foreclosures in the United States over the next two years will total 1,390,000 and that by the end of 2012, 12.7 percent of all residential borrowers in the United States will be forced out of their homes. The corporate state, which as an idea is an abstraction to many Americans, is very real when the pieces are carefully put together and linked to a system of corporate power that has made this poverty, the denial of our constitutional rights and a state of permanent war inevitable. The assault on the American working class – an assault that has devastated members of my own family – is nearly complete. The U.S. economy has 3.2 million fewer jobs today than it did when George Bush took office, including 2.5 million fewer manufacturing jobs. In the past three years, nearly one in five U.S. workers was laid off. Among workers laid off from full-time work, roughly one-fourth were earning less than $40,000 annually. A total of 15 million U.S. workers are unemployed, underemployed or too discouraged to job hunt, according to the Labor Department. There are whole sections of the United States which now resemble the developing world. There has been a Weimarization of the American working class. And the assault on the middle class is now under way. Anything that can be put on software – from finance to architecture to engineering – can and is being outsourced to workers in countries such as India or China who accept a fraction of the pay and work without benefits. And both the Republican and Democratic parties, beholden to corporations for money and power, allow this to happen.”
Will Americans do anything about the war on the middle class and the growing divide between rich and poor, corporations and workers? Or will they stand idly by and continue to let the class war continue?
Related posts:
If you liked this article,
This post was written by:
 |
BeyondGoodAndEvil - who has written 158 posts on Free Range Talk.
|
Submit your own article via this simple form and we will format it for you for publishing.
Jump to Leave New Comment 
Comments
Recent Comments
- on Weekend MODUC President and Chancellor of Community College system resignfollowing CA Chamber of Commerce's end...
- Sadly, yes.
- on Wordsmithery
me either. - Isn't that the truth.
- on WordsmitheryLOL - not sure I want to tackle that one!!
- I'm going to enjoy this a bit later - watching the teevee right now!!!
- on Weekend MODMorons. Inarticulate, uneducated, stupid. Obama is "willfully destroying the country?" "I don't t...
- on Weekend MOD
Was at the gym this morning. Once again, 3 out of 4 teevee stations were tuned to fucksnoise....
Posts
Tags
Authors
Categories
© 2009 Free Range Talk. Powered by your Donations.
241,720 Comments Since March 2009 
-->
(Report comment)
Capitalist Superheros
“RBS Bankster’s Holding Labour Government to Ransom for £1.5 Billion”
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article15519.html
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
(Report comment)
Good lord! The LIBOR index is traditionally one of the most conservative. If you have a mortgage adjustment tied to it, you’d better burn your home for the insurance money now.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
“Drug money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer … Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un -cfief-claims
[Reply]
(Report comment)
“KRISTOL: There’s this one sentence, “There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”
That’s a pretty striking statement. I mean any American president should say that who’s looking at Iran developing nuclear weapons. I think he is, it’s not just that Israel might use preemptive force against Iran. This speech lays the predicate for a legitimate use of force to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons by the U.S.”
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
(Report comment)
Only if you accept his paranoid vision of the mullahs being a suicidal bunch of nitwits willing to see themselves and their own country destroyed by attacking Israel.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
(Report comment)
Well that’s where it could ultimately lead, if not by the Obama administration, then by a Republican administration. That’s why I have so much trouble with Obama’s speech. You can’t use pre-emptive violence in order to prevent something “you” decide is a risk or reality, particularly since the intelligence we have on Iran or most countries in the Middle East is so flawed. Most of the intel is gained by reading publicly available literature, news articles etc. The conclusions that those in the CIA draw in their briefs are often just supposition or worst case scenarios, based on assumptions mostly, not hard evidence.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
(Report comment)
The only thing threatened by insurgents in Afghanistan is the construction of TAPI, the proposed gas pipeline from the Caspian basin.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
Houston Elects Openly Gay Mayor
It’s the End of the World, I tell ya.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
(Report comment)
Must be one of the seven signs.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
Bush pushed us a long way toward Fascism. Fortunately he was too lazy to be a third rate knockoff of Hitler. All we need is one dedicated Far Right extremist in the WH to finish the job.
We all laugh at Sarah Palin, but she pushes all the same buttons in the same way as AH did, the fear and hate mongering, the identification of herself with the country and the inarticulate paranoid speaking to the gut rather than the brain as well as being a rube from a backwater of the country. There’s a lot to fear there.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
(Report comment)
I agree.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
(Report comment)
The good thing is I believe she scares too many independents. There’s also plenty of time for her to really go off the rails before the 2012 elections in any number of directions.
If the extent of her church’s religious apostasy ever really makes it to the forefront, she’ll begin to scare the Evangelicals too just as Romney does being a Mormon.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
(Report comment)
I still can’t believe the video of her witch doctor casting a spell over her was not enough to drive more people away.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
(Report comment)
That does seem strange until you realize that a lot of evangelical churches do the same thing with the laying on of hands. To a lot of them this would not have been that strange. Do you know about the “Rattlesnake” churches?
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
(Report comment)
it’s because most people cannot (or will not) understand technical explanations … if something “feels” like it makes sense emotionally, they connect.
those who can push emotional buttons can gather an army of followers
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
(Report comment)
last week when Sarah said “THEY don’t want to hear facts” on the same day that Batshit Bachmann said “THEY are divorced from reality” — that’s all the Teabaggers need to hear. That virtually explains it all for them.
most conservatives, if you ask them why they are so anti-homosexual, they will say “I just don’t like it,” and that is the depth of their intellectualization on the topic.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
(Report comment)
That is what my sister says. I asked her how gay marriage threatened her, pointed out that the churches were not threatened by this, and that is word for word what she said.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
(Report comment)
that is literally word for word exactly what every single social-conservative will say to you if you ask them to explain their position on gay marriage. The really deep thinkers in the klan will say that they don’t want the children to learn gay sex in the schools
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
(Report comment)
I’ve heard that too.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
(Report comment)
She should have just said, “They don’t want to think”. That’s what it really comes down to.
Our populace has been so dumbed down to go along with anything they believe is normal that it’s pathetic. P. T. Barnum was born too early, he’d rule the world today.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
(Report comment)
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
(Report comment)
actually, Sarah was referring to Al Gore being “scared” to debate her b/c he (Gore) and his peeps (They) don’t want to hear her facts.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
(Report comment)
Something Madison Avenue has understood for a long time.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
(Report comment)
Someone who scares me more than Palin is Liz Cheney.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
(Report comment)
As repulsive as she is, Liz Cheney has never held an elected office to my knowledge. She certainly hasn’t held a national level one such as governor or senator which would qualify her for the presidency. So although she might be a threat sometime in the future, I wouldn’t see her as an immediate one.
The one person whom I’m concerned about more than any other is Jeb Bush. He’ll be prime material for 2016. He has most of the bad traits of his brother and is a hell of a lot smarter and more vision oriented.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
(Report comment)
absolutely agree on the Jeb Bush threat level. He is keeping a very low profile right now, but is definitely laying the ground work for the overtaking of the GOP.
I highly doubt he will tie himself to a Cheney … or Sarah Palin.
More likely to see a Jeb / Mittens configuration
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
(Report comment)
and to anyone who rests assuredly on some comforting belief that the country will never go Bush again, there is at this very moment a sound argument taking shape that W was
a superheronot so bad, as we see more and more of his people and programs being maintained in the current WH[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
(Report comment)
I was speaking of the witch-bitches. I agree re Jeb Bush. I only hope we have someone to put against him with some power of eloquence.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
I’ve been talking about our descent into a police state and it’s well documented by the few on our side with large enough balls to speak up.
The question we SHOULD be asking is “WHO IS THE MAN OR WOMAN WHO WILL STEP UP AS UNCLE ADOLF AND PROMISE THE POOR AND MISERABLE MIDDLE AND LOWER MIDDLE CLASSES WEALTH AND A NEW AMERICAN ASCENDENCY IN EXCHANGE FOR TOTAL CONTROL OF THE COUNTRY AND HAVE WE FALLEN SO LOW AS TO CRAVE A DADDY DICTATOR?”
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
(Report comment)
Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, James Inhofe, any number or religious leaders, etc. etc. the list of potential candidates is getting longer.
ps. I DO NOT include Rush Limbaugh, Bill Oreilly or Sean Hannity on this list. They are money driven whores who do not believe their own drivel.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
(Report comment)
As the economy declines and the tools are already in place to subdue the masses by force, it makes America rife for the takeover by some kind of crazy dictator and in fact, I would even think that in many ways Americans respond well to fear in that they would be open to one authoritarian daddy figure to make everything ok again.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
(Report comment)
I don’t know if they want a mommy figure like Sarah. I hope not. :shudder:
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
(Report comment)
she might be one of the worst Moms I’ve ever seen
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
(Report comment)
Shhhhh … Sarah’s workin’ on it.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
(Report comment)
She would be at the top of my list.
1. reaches the masses with her folksy bullshit.
2. incurious and surrounds herself with the incurious.
3. from reports she’s not above underhanded intimidation or violence.
4. demogogue
5. definitely anti-intellectual
6. a fanatic, religious and otherwise.
7. pretty package
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
(Report comment)
Was Adolph a pretty package? And if so, to whom, pray tell?
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
(Report comment)
Millions of young German women adored him as a father figure.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
(Report comment)
Germany is different. America wants pretty.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
(Report comment)
Thus, G.W. Bush.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
(Report comment)
Touche’
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
(Report comment)
Nope. Which makes her even scarier.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
(Report comment)
it’s the HYPOCRISY that will take her down
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
(Report comment)
I hope it’s the Levi that takes her down.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
(Report comment)
I would think that being caught in her hypocrisy would increase the chance that she STAYS down.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
(Report comment)
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
(Report comment)
I don’t think they’ll be able to spin that one out.
I hadn’t heard about that.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
“First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.” Martin Niemöller
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:52 am
(Report comment)
Great quote.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
(Report comment)
I remember reading that in college. It is happening here and now. I hear it every time I go to my sister’s or my nephew’s.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
(Report comment)
Splendid quote.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
Political, economic, social and moral decline? Check.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
Brad Blakeman on MSNBC: “We freed 50 million people from Iraq.”
Scahill says it best in his Tweet on the topic:
“Brad Blakeman, GOP strategist, on MSNBC: “We freed 50 million people from Iraq.” What the hell is this idiot talking about?”
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:44 am
(Report comment)
They’re free! Yay!
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:52 am
(Report comment)
And currently wandering aimlessly in Sri Lanka.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
(Report comment)
Hey Wiz!
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
(Report comment)
Top o’ the morning, lassie.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
(Report comment)
Luckily, I know you don’t mean the dog, Lassie.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
(Report comment)
Didn’t someone tell him that there are not 50 million people IN Iraq?
That’s the problem. No one calls bullshit on these people. When you allow that type of crap to be spewed without any type of objection then it show s tow things:
1. That the people in the debate, on BOTH sides, are illinformed enough NOT to know that.
2. That our side is too cowardly to talk tough.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
(Report comment)
‘zaklee! they’ve all been Oprahtized — even a debate, even on a “librul media” network seems ridiculous when bullshit is allowed to pass as fact and never called out.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
(Report comment)
This is something that irritates me with all the networks. MSNBC does it too.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
(Report comment)
Everyone in the media does it. They throw out BS all the time. It’s easier than fact checking and the inflamatory rhetoric pulls in the rubes.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
(Report comment)
and once it’s out there, it seems to not matter what fact checking is done after fact. It’s too late.
Jon Stewart does a good job of being totally prepared and questioning everything in a respectful but factual manner … Rachel Maddow, too.
Though I notice both Jon and Rachel are almost apologetic to their guests when they call them out.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
(Report comment)
Can’t stand that part. Acting nice in order to get them back and not alienate prospective guests.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
(Report comment)
“From Iraq.” Where did they go? Stupidity squared if you add that to the fact that Iraq doesn’t have that many people.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
I think there are many many valid comparisons, and frankly, they scare me. Whenever a political party creates a base from religious extremists eyebrows should jump right off the top of people’s heads. The economic divisions offer another serious clue and the hidden nature of the real power brokers offers yet another warning sign.
We have a shadow government. It’s been growing like a cancer since the early days of the Military-Industrial-Complex of the 1950’s and shows no sign of diminshing control. And if that isn’t frightening enough, consider the closed eyes given the behavior of some of our youth.
The tinder is set and waiting for the match. The deliberate distractions of media attention to minutia isn’t accidental, at least I don’t think so, and we miss the real danger that is rustling in the bushes.
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes…”
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:50 am
(Report comment)
I was just discussing this a minute ago with my husband. The complicity of the media with the government’s and corporations’ happy stories. We were discussing whether the media’s co-operation is deliberate, accidental or just in line with their own interests.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:55 am
(Report comment)
well, they claim it’s because they have to give equal time and be nonpartisan … but then again, Faux News claims they are “fair and balanced”
if not for the blogosphere, we wouldn’t know 95% of the information we do know … which I suspect is still less than half of the whole story
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:59 am
(Report comment)
Thank dawg for the internets. Yeah, I think you’re right about still only knowing half the story.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:52 am
(Report comment)
It scares me too, MsDoc. This time it will be fought in the streets and in the countryside of all civilized nations. The “Urban Wars” as Nora Roberts/J D Robb so aptly named them will be fought against civilization and not for it.
Yet, we can still avoid it, but no one has the courage to stand up and say “enough” in public.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:56 am
(Report comment)
I believe we already are in the midst of a Civil War, and it’s playing out like a Reality Show.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
It is ironic that the things that the Right Wing accused the Left of doing i the ’70’s and ’80’s are the very things condoned by them today.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:30 am
(Report comment)
they are the masters of projectionism.
we see it every single day
[Reply]
(Report comment)
If unemployment continues to rise, if America continues to borrow and the Fed keeps printing money, we are in very serious economic trouble. In order to keep inflation down, the Fed knows that unemployment must rise and stay at a high level.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
It’s going to be interesting to see whether she is quietened down by the WH or promoted.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 10:55 am
(Report comment)
This was supposed to be a reply to Kgrrr’s Elizabeth Warren comment.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:12 am
(Report comment)
the cynic in me expects she’s going to quieted way down. But the idealist in me hopes she’s going to be promoted.
that Frank Bill that passed last week, I meant to write a post about it, for the most part the bill does not impress me. It gives banks and Wall Streeters much the same free rein as they’ve had for years.
The good part about it is the Consumer Protection Agency that was tacked on to the bottom of the bill.
That was Warren’s idea, and I truly hope she is put in an oversight position.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:15 am
(Report comment)
Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act H.R. 4173
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4173/text
the Consumer Protection part looks good.
the reform part, not so much
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:20 am
(Report comment)
The reform part is worrying. Thanks for the link.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:31 am
(Report comment)
In what regard, Charlie? Define “reform”? Is that like a “doctrine”?
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:45 am
(Report comment)
Lack of reform, I should have typed.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
I cannot speak to the comparisons to Nazi Germany. I’m kind of sick of everyone tossing that about.
I just know what I see here and now, and it ain’t pretty.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 10:54 am
(Report comment)
Weimar Republic, not the Nazis.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:07 am
(Report comment)
My opinion, also. The Nazis were fascistic from the beginning.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:09 am
(Report comment)
I mean the question is about the parrallels between the Weimar Republic and America, not the Nazis.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:32 am
(Report comment)
have you been hearing about the journalists being detained at the Canadian border by American guards? One was roughed up pretty bad last week.
that shit scares me a lot!
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:37 am
(Report comment)
No, I hadn’t heard that. That is scary.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:46 am
(Report comment)
Yes, I did. Amy Goodman specifically. They wanted to know what she was going to say and ask before they would let her in!
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:59 am
(Report comment)
“Hugo-award-nominated science fiction author Dr. Peter Watts is in serious legal trouble after he was beaten, pepper-sprayed and imprisoned by American border guards at a Canada U.S. border crossing December 8. This is a call to friends, fans and colleagues to help.”
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
(Report comment)
If we have an honest history of these times after the Urbans, it will show that America was at the bottom when these things happened.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
(Report comment)
That’s horrific! I hadn’t seen that.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:41 am
(Report comment)
I know that, The Weimar Republic was corporatist in nature, which, I agree, led to the fascist regime of the Nazis. The problem was, corporations do not have legal police actions available. They paid Hitler to run for office, then got overrun by the police state.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:17 am
(Report comment)
oooops, sorry. I will admit that I do not have enough knowledge on the Weimar Republic on which to soundly base an opinion.
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:29 am
(Report comment)
Sorry, I should have put more specifics in the question. The Weimarization refers to the pre Nazi period.
[Reply]
(Report comment)
Elizabeth Warren seems to be the voice speaking loudest about this War on the Middle Class.
I so hope she is given a position of authority and oversight. I’ll not hold my breath, sadly.
Here is a one-hour lecture from Dr. Warren last year “The Death of the Middle Class”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A&feature=PlayList&p=39208898 597677A5&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=38
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 10:51 am
(Report comment)
and here she is last week
[Reply]
December 13th, 2009 at 11:15 am
(Report comment)
I love Elizabeth Warren. She has more sense in her little finger than the rest of them put together.
[Reply]