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WYFP? We need to plan for de-trumpification programs on the model of post-WWII Germany [1]
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Date: 2025-02-01
Never too soon. After the first Trump term there were no real programs for detrumpification and the GOP retained power that allowed them to win in 2024. The time now comes to address the injured canard (“lame duck”) status of Mango Mussolini, and prepare to ensure the withering away of pernicious trumpism. Resistance, yes; repudiation, definitely.
(2019) Anything less than an overwhelming popular mandate for progressive, fundamental restructuring of the institutions of society along democratic lines will be insufficient to even begin the process of detrumpification. [...] You can't afford not to. Playing it "safe" is losing, and not just because centrism is (witness the centrist Obama years' radical erosion of Democrats' ability to participate in governance) far from being a safe bet in the first place. Playing it "safe" is losing now because what Democrats win with anything but a broad popular mandate would be a loss. Only a huge win in 2020 will make detrumpification possible. And only detrumpification reopens the door for American democratization. If you want a chance at detrumpification, if you care about the possibility of democracy, you can't afford to place your bet anywhere but on the candidate who gives you the best odds of increasing voter participation enough to secure a real popular mandate. Every realistic person knows well enough who that is. www.commondreams.org/...
(2020) Under Trump, presidential norms fell like dominoes. He refused to release his income tax returns. When one of his golf resorts ran short of guests, he proposed holding an international summit there. He demanded that Justice Department prosecutors investigate his opponents and go easy on his friends. He pardoned two former advisors suspected of concealing misdeeds on his behalf after they were convicted of federal crimes. When whistleblowers filed official complaints, he retaliated, and when Congress subpoenaed executive branch officials, he ordered them not to comply. When winning Senate confirmation for Cabinet nominations became irksome, he appointed “acting secretaries” instead, explaining that “it gives me flexibility.” I could go on, but you get the idea. The good news is that most of democracy’s guardrails held. Federal courts struck down dozens of Trump’s orders and regulations. His own aides derailed some of his worst ideas, including the G-7 summit at the golf club. We were lucky in one respect: As an autocrat, Trump wasn’t very competent. Still, the lesson should have been sobering: Presidents’ powers are restrained mostly by their willingness to observe unwritten rules and political constraints. If a chief executive ignores those norms, there is little to stop him. That’s why the next president and Congress need to strengthen the guardrails — much as happened after Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal in 1974. www.latimes.com/…
(2020) Playing up fears of Trump’s reelection is a useful get-out-the-vote strategy, but for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that the election happens and the president loses unambiguously. A majority of Americans will sigh with relief. Still, don’t count on Trump — and more important, Trumpism — evaporating like a nightmare at daybreak. To begin with, there’s the president’s legendary base of support, the one-third of Americans who’d continue to back him even if he were to shoot someone on New York City’s Fifth Avenue (or, through criminal negligence, effectively murder more than 100,000 people by ignoring a pandemic for 70 days). Such Trumpists aren’t going to suddenly emigrate en masse to New Zealand, as some liberals threatened to do after the last presidential election. [...] Are all these people and institutions true believers in Donald Trump? Probably not. Sporting more of a performative style than a coherent ideology, he is, to misquote Lenin, a “useful idiot.” When he’s no longer useful — that is, no longer in power — he’ll only be an idiot and the opportunists will move on. While Trump may be expendable, Trumpism — which lies at the intersections of racial and sexual anxiety, hatred of government and the expert class, and opposition to cosmopolitan internationalism — is not so easily rooted out. Drawing heavily on American traditions of Know-Nothing-ism, America-First-ism, and Goldwater Republicanism, Trump’s essential worldview will survive the 2020 election. www.counterpunch.org/...
(2020) The response to Trumpism, and defense against it, should therefore focus on stringent measures to contain the power of the GOP and its ultra-wealthy backers (as the most powerful anti-democratic forces in the U.S.), alongside initiatives to reduce the polarization in U.S. society and reinvigorate all American citizens' beliefs in democracy as the way to organize society. www.salon.com/...
British historian Ian Kershaw in his book The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich[97] writes about the various surveys carried out at the German population: In 1945, 42% of young Germans and 22% of adult Germans thought that the reconstruction of Germany would be best applied by a "strong new Führer".
reconstruction of Germany would be best applied by a "strong new Führer". In 1952, 10% of Germans thought that Hitler was the greatest statesman and that his greatness would only be realized at a later date; and 22% thought he had made "some mistakes" but was still an excellent leader.
In 1953, 14% of Germans said they would vote for someone like Hitler again. en.wikipedia.org/...
Greenland as The Sudetenland which was claimed to be the Nazis "last territorial demand".
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