anyone interested in discussing the possibile similarities between our present political situation & weimar?

I'm open, HB. I may not be the best for this purpose. I've called Obama, Ebert on DU and there are some interesting similarities but I don't really think there is much in common between Weimar and the present U.S. situation. I'd like to hear you out, though.

Two things

I don't know enough about the intricacies of the Weimar Republic to make any comparisons beyond the obvious

Second, I heard someone on TV say we're going to become Austria 1919. I suppose that could happen, but how relevant is that fear/threat to right now?

On the Austria 1919 front I'll give you this much:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125245417031494185.html

Finance Overhaul Falters as '08 Shock Fades
By DAVID ENRICH and DAMIAN PALETTA
Wall Street Journal
September 9 2009

Nearly one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent shock waves
across the globe, the world is a different place.

The investment bank's messy death intensified the deepest recession since
the Great Depression. It helped open the way to a bigger role for government
in managing the economy. It cast doubts in the public's mind about the
wisdom of relying on markets to correct themselves.

But to a surprising degree, there are some big things that Lehman's demise
hasn't changed.

Nearly a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers helped speed the U.S.
toward a recession, the banking industry is getting back on its feet quicker
than lawmakers can agree on new regulations.

On the regulatory front, Democrats' efforts to rework the rules for finance
have bogged down amid infighting between federal regulators, fury among
bankers and opposition from many lawmakers who believe that further
expanding the government's reach will only create new problems. The
all-consuming debate over health care has damped enthusiasm for tackling
such complex legislation.

Meanwhile, major U.S. banks have regained their footing, and some of their
swagger. Profits are off their lows. Large compensation packages are back.
And so is risky business.

Companies are selling exotic financial products similar to those that felled
markets and the world economy last fall. And banks' appetite for risk has
grown: The nation's top five banks collectively stood to lose more than $1
billion on an average day in the second quarter of 2009 should their trading
bets go sour, a record level.

Now, the federal government is locked in a kind of regulatory limbo. U.S.
officials say they are committed to preventing history from repeating and
have pleaded for fresh powers to do so. But today, they have few new
options -- excepting another bailout -- should financial markets seize up
again or a large institution totter.

"There's no fundamental change in the way the banks are run or regulated,"
said Peter J. Solomon, a former Lehman vice chairman who runs an eponymous
investment bank in New York. "There's just fewer of them."

Washington officials say they are encouraged that financial markets and the
economy appear to be healing after the turmoil. But they also say they feel
an urgent need to establish new rules.

"We are under no illusion that things left to their own devices will evolve
back to a healthy normal," said White House National Economic Council
Director Lawrence Summers in an interview. "The concern...is that a
resumption of confidence, which is a good thing, not become a return to
hubris, which would be a very bad thing."

Wall Street's rebound presents a mixed bag for consumers. These banks'
clients are demonstrating a renewed appetite for risk, a sign that
confidence is returning to markets. But credit remains scarce for all but
the healthiest borrowers and lenders are imposing new fees and higher
interest rates on credit cards and other products. Corporations, too, are
likely to have trouble getting credit if they can't access the capital
markets or have less-than-pristine debt ratings.

The financial world has been on a wild ride since Sept. 14, 2008, the Sunday
that Lehman toppled toward bankruptcy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped from 11,422 on Sept. 12 to 6,547 on
March 9. More than 100 banks have failed. The federal government has pumped
more than $200 billion in taxpayer money into banks, and the government
temporarily deemed the country's 19 largest as too big to fail in a
disorderly fashion.

Some of Wall Street's most notorious practices are unlikely to reappear.
Banks say they've permanently abandoned housing risky assets in
off-balance-sheet vehicles. Top banks have also stockpiled capital to raise
their reserves to the highest levels in recent memory, providing a bigger
cushion against market downturns.

Last December, at a black-tie gala in New York's Plaza Hotel, Bank of
America Corp. CEO Kenneth Lewis told a crowd of bankers to expect a humbler
industry to emerge from the wreckage. "We play a supporting role in the
economy, not a leading role. Financial services are a means, not an end,"
Mr. Lewis said. "There should be some humility in that." The audience
applauded.

But the mood has shifted as the Dow strengthened this year. Some of the
government's rescue programs are coming to an end, and big banks are paying
back funds they borrowed under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, releasing
them from Washington's control.

The top five Wall Street firms -- Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Goldman
Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley -- made $23.3
billion in profits in the first six months of 2009. That compared with a
$6.7 billion loss a year earlier at those banks and the companies they
acquired, but it fell short of the $49.8 billion they earned in the first
half of 2007, the peak of Wall Street's boom.

These banks' biggest profit engines remain their trading arms, which place
short-term wagers -- much of it with the firms' own money -- on stocks,
bonds, commodities, currencies and other financial products and markets.

Losses at these arms in recent years crippled firms such as Merrill Lynch &
Co. and Citigroup. This year, trading has generated windfalls. In the first
half of 2009, the top five firms generated $56 billion in trading revenue,
compared with $22 billion in the first half of 2008 for those banks and the
firms they acquired, and $58 billion at the boom's peak. On 46 separate days
in the second quarter, Goldman's traders pocketed at least $100 million in
revenue, while losing money on two days.

Overall, the top firms are assuming greater trading risks than they were a
year ago, based on a standard measure called value at risk. The $1 billion
that the top five banks stood to lose on an average day in the second
quarter represents an 18% increase from a year earlier and is up 75% from
the $592 million in the first half of 2007, according to regulatory filings.

Wall Street "has been tiptoeing back into the pond," said Robert Glauber,
who ran the National Association of Securities Dealers, Wall Street's
self-regulatory arm, until 2006. "They have short memories."

Bankers' Pay

Despite a continuing outcry over bankers' compensation, large pay packages
are still the norm at some companies as they lure talent and try to keep
competitors from poaching employees.

In the first half of 2009, the top five firms set aside about $61 billion to
cover compensation and benefits for their employees. A year earlier, the
total for those firms, plus the bi

g banks they subsequently acquired, was
about $65 billion; in the first half of 2007, the figure was $77 billion.
Per employee, the payouts may exceed previous years since the firms have
collectively eliminated tens of thousands of jobs.

Congress earlier this year imposed restrictions on bonus payments. So
instead, several companies, including Bank of America and Citigroup, opted
to pay larger salaries. J.P. Morgan is planning a similar move.

The trend has caught the attention of world leaders.

"The abatement of financial tensions has led some financial institutions to
imagine they can return to the same modes of action prevalent before the
crisis," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas
Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote in a letter to other world
leaders on Sept. 3. The three leaders advocate strict new limits on bonus
payments.

Regulators have told banks to avoid excessive risk, but haven't been
specific, executives say. In fact, federal officials are pushing banks to
quickly return to profitability, which Wall Street executives have
interpreted as a blessing of vigorous trading.

Goldman and Morgan Stanley were expected to face tougher oversight after
they converted last fall into bank holding companies overseen by the Federal
Reserve, a move to gain access to government funding and ease concerns about
their stability.

Both have dialed back their bets with borrowed money. For every dollar of
trading assets on their books, the firms are holding roughly twice as much
capital as they did in prior years, according to Brad Hintz, an analyst at
Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. This deleveraging makes their businesses safer
but less lucrative.

But much remains the same. Both firms were expected to sell power plants and
oil rigs they own in their commodities-trading businesses, because
commercial banks generally aren't allowed to hold such physical assets. But
the banks, after a discussion with the Fed, believe they're allowed to keep
them because of a provision in federal law that allows newly formed bank
holding companies to retain certain long-held assets, according to people
familiar with the matter.

Exotic Vehicles

Perhaps the best indicator of Wall Street's revived exuberance is its
continued pursuit of exotic financial engineering. The market for credit
derivatives, widely blamed for helping destabilize markets, remains vast.

As of March 31, the notional value of credit derivatives outstanding in the
U.S. banking system, a widely used measure, stood at $14.6 trillion,
according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. That was down 8%
from three months earlier, but still almost triple the $5.5 trillion level
of three years ago.

Total return swaps -- a type of derivative that lost favor during the
crisis -- are among the instruments regaining popularity, bankers and
investors say. Banks use the swaps to provide hedge funds with low-cost
financing, which the hedge funds in turn use to purchase leveraged loans or
other assets from the bank. The hedge funds pledge the purchased assets as
collateral for the loan. During the crisis, the swaps burned banks that
seized collateral from hedge funds, only to find that the assets' values had
plunged along with the overall markets.

Even collateralized debt obligations, perhaps the biggest money-loser in
Wall Street history, are staging a comeback of sorts. Banks are
disassembling securities produced by bundling home and commercial mortgages
and repackaging them into what market experts describe as mini-CDOs. The
goal is to cobble the mortgage-backed securities, seen as high-risk, into
instruments more palatable to investors.

Wall Street firms defend their use of the complex products. "A structured or
engineered product may be entirely appropriate for the purchaser," said
Citigroup spokesman Alex Samuelson, whose bank is among those marketing new
types of derivatives to investors. "They're not intrinsically bad."

The Obama administration, financial regulators and many lawmakers believe
that more regulation is necessary to protect the U.S. economy from another
crisis and to bolster confidence. Certain elements enjoy broad support, such
as a proposal to empower government officials to take over and break up
large, faltering financial companies whose failure could destabilize the
economy. Many policy makers believe that such powers would have allowed the
government to mitigate the impact of Lehman's collapse.

Geithner's Push

But many Republicans and some Democrats are skeptical of some elements of
the proposal, such as a proposed consumer-protection agency and a plan to
expand the Federal Reserve's powers to regulate the country's largest
financial institutions.

In Washington on March 26, newly minted Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
took a rough outline of President Barack Obama's financial rules to Capitol
Hill. Administration officials knew it would take months for these proposals
to work their way through Congress.

But Mr. Geithner argued that the government urgently needed the power to
take over big failing companies. At a congressional hearing, he urged
lawmakers to grant that authority "as quickly as you can."

Political support was lukewarm. Rep. Don Manzullo (R., Ill.) called the idea
"radical." In June, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank
(D., Mass.) delayed an immediate vote on the issue, pending a broader review
of financial regulation.

In the meantime, regulators have tried to crack down on dozens of banks,
slapping hundreds with penalties that restrict their growth and direct them
to raise capital. The Fed has centralized more of its supervision of large
banks through top officials in Washington.

In July, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair told a congressional panel that big banks
were able to essentially "blackmail" the government because some companies
were so large that officials had no way of breaking them apart if they were
to falter.

Regulators know it would be difficult to break up Citigroup's complex bank
holding company operations, for example, even if they wanted to. Bank of
America, J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo & Co. each controlled more than 10% of
the nation's deposits -- once a firm regulatory cap -- because of
acquisitions performed during the heat of the financial crisis, sometimes at
the government's urging.

The Obama administration is expected to intensify its push for the new
regulation regime in the coming weeks.

During a weekend summit, the world's top finance ministers agreed to create
higher capital requirements for top global banks once they recover from the
financial turmoil, a move that would force them, in effect, to become more
conservative.

At the meeting in London, Mr. Geithner implored policy makers to continue
fighting for tougher financial regulations in their own countries. "We can't
let momentum for reform fade as the crisis recedes," he pleaded.

to tell you the truth, i hadn't really thought it through or reviewed the history either.

i made a mental leap from the continuing polarization (in one sense) of the dems & pubs, at least rhetorically - to street fights of right v. left during the weimar period & had some gut feeling there were parallels.

just wanted to kick the idea around.

thinking over what i remember, seem to be plenty of non-parallels as well - initially a period of liberalization (unlike the present) & creative ferment (very much unlike the present, imo) - but thinking there might be parallels in the geo-political/economic setting -

so if you have any thoughts - e.g. why don't think there's much similarity?

i'm not getting the austria 1919 reference re the article?

to tell you the truth, i hadn't really thought it through or reviewed the history either.

i made a mental leap from the continuing polarization (in one sense) of the dems & pubs, at least rhetorically - to street fights of right v. left during the weimar period & had some gut feeling there were parallels.

just wanted to kick the idea around.

thinking over what i remember, seem to be plenty of non-parallels as well - initially a period of liberalization (unlike the present) & creative ferment (very much unlike the present, imo) - but thinking there might be parallels in the geo-political/economic setting -

so if you have any thoughts - e.g. why don't think there's much similarity?

i'm not getting the austria 1919 reference re the article?


Two different kinds of scarcity -- in one case the goods are there, but you can't afford them. In the other, no one will provide you the goods even if you COULD afford them (which you can't). Granted, if the shortages are severe enough, they amount to the same thing.

color me stupid: i'm still not getting your drift. you're going to have to spell it out, i'm afraid. but i'm interested.

color me stupid: i'm still not getting your drift. you're going to have to spell it out, i'm afraid. but i'm interested.


If you listen to some of the Doomers on teevee they're talking about what happens if China refuses to loan us more money which causes the US to default, go bankrupt, collapse, whatever. At that point no one would trade with us anymore and, so they claim, there would be a literal scarcity of goods.

Its not my theory or anything lol

ok, gotcha.

debt issues feature prominently in most such periods, it seems.

hard to square china's supposed leverage over the US re debt with 50% of chinese exports being in reality the off-shored production of foreign corps re-exporting back to their "homelands," though.

seems more like corps moving production around & funneling money through local govs, same as they do domestically. high-level shell game.

this angle is one of the things i'm interested in looking at more closely.

to tell you the truth, i hadn't really thought it through or reviewed the history either.

i made a mental leap from the continuing polarization (in one sense) of the dems & pubs, at least rhetorically - to street fights of right v. left during the weimar period & had some gut feeling there were parallels.

just wanted to kick the idea around.

thinking over what i remember, seem to be plenty of non-parallels as well - initially a period of liberalization (unlike the present) & creative ferment (very much unlike the present, imo) - but thinking there might be parallels in the geo-political/economic setting -

so if you have any thoughts - e.g. why don't think there's much similarity?

i'm not getting the austria 1919 reference re the article?

1) The basis for the Weimar failure was the German defeat in WWI. Germany had been the fastest growing and most efficient capitalist state in Europe before the War, but hemmed in by the commercial monopolies which had crystallized before German unification (mainly the English Empire but also the French and others). The war left Germany defeated, deeply in debt, crowded by a series of new "nations" in the East created out of the territory historically "reserved" for German expansion, militarily weakened and not in control of its own currency, its own trade policy or its own foreign relations. The only possible path for the German bourgeoisie was to attempt to overturn the results of the war with a second round, achieved either through a new war or the threat of war. In this, Weimar was the exact opposite of the U.S.A., whose position is much more similar to that of England - trying not to overturn, but to maintain the status quo in the face of depression and increasing world competition.

2) The class struggle in Germany was very real. The Spartacus revolt was only a few years past. The German Communist Party was both strong and revolutionary, swelled from the ranks of the obviously bankrupt Social Democrats who had been the largest and most powerful Marxist party in Europe. The trade unions had grown even faster than the political organizations and were exceedingly militant. In comparison, the U.S. "left" does not exist, and political fighting in the U.S. doesn't begin to approach even the level of farce.

In opposition, the German burghers had little of their own to mobilize. They owned the worthless Weimar government but that was neither powerful nor easily moved. The German right-wing parties called for the simple suppression of the Left but without having the power to achieve it (the genesis of modern day Libertarianism is rooted in this bunch of reactionary but wholly impractical toads). New Deal concessions were as impossible as simple police "measures". It was only under these conditions that the German capitalists started to warm up to the 6 million demobilized, largely unemployed but also declassed war veterans, to the political replacements for the never fully disarmed Freikorps, and to the crazy racialists, petty-bourgeois imperialists, and middle-class philistines of the "populist-right". Remember that this right had been mildly anti-capitalist, secular, and crazy (only the last brings any similarity). More to the point, it viewed the state as the primary instrument of "class reconciliation in the national interest". It was not only the Nazis who believed this - it was a uniform platform both throughout the popular right in Germany and within international Fascism as a whole. The German burgers would never have turned in their wholly owned state for this crazy Nazi compromise state without serious fear of extinction.

3) The role of the Army, and of the Junker Officer caste cannot be overestimated. They had been the main pillar of Bismark's organization of the "New Germany", they were a part, but a very sectarian part of the class of Burghers, they were suffering from Vietnam Syndrome times 10,000 - "we were betrayed!" - and they arrogantly guaranteed the control of the new "alliance", a guarantee they neither had the power nor the stomach to fulfil.

Similarities:
The only real similarity that I see is the absolutely obvious degeneration of bourgeois democracy and the utter bankruptcy and toadyism of the bourgeois parties... In the Weimar era, this was true in France (with the powerless "Popular Front") and England and even the U.S., as well as in Germany. The idea of the "triumph" of liberal democracy was a post-WWII fantasy. Bourgeois democracy in that era became as decrepit as the Roman Senate. The throw-off of insane political sects and nutty political theories - both left and right - was the natural byproduct of that putrification.

Hey, HB, here is something similar to what I was talking about. The writer loses his mind or something in the latter half of the article (creative spirit of Weimar..???) but it is pretty close to my understanding other than that and echoes most of what Anax wrote as well

http://hnn.us/articles/43288.html

Weimar America?
By Eric D. Weitz

Mr. Weitz is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and author of Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, 2007).

Everyone loves to throw around the Weimar metaphor. Google some variant of "Weimar" and one quickly enters the nether-world of crazy conspiracy theorists and scary neo-Nazis. "Weimar America" is where Jews rule the media and control everyone's thoughts. Or it's a land that went off the gold standard (anyone remember that?) so hyperinflation and fascist police are just around the corner. It's a place that has abandoned Christianity, or it's a country whose inept president is just marking time for the dictator in the wings. It's the prelude to the "Neo-con Reich," the Apocalypse and Second Coming, or the Nazification of America.

Refine the search a bit -- add, say "Condoleezza Rice" to "Weimar" and "America" -- and things get a bit saner, but not by much. Newsweek columnist Michael Hirsch says that Iraq is "the most powerful example of democracy's drawbacks since the Weimar Republic." Pat Buchanan thunders against an "affluent Weimar America" that celebrates sex and destroys Christian values. A Janet Jackson dance routine (no, not the wardrobe malfunction one) that evokes goose-stepping Storm Troopers becomes a metaphor for the decline of America. And the Secretary of State conjures up Weimar not for America, but for a Russia in dangerous disarray.

Crazy or sane, left or right, these analogies all picture Weimar as nothing more than a conflict-ridden, sex-crazed epoch moving inexorably toward totalitarian dictatorship. Somehow, in some undefined way, a quantum of crisis became a stress-load that the political system could no longer bear. Too much sex or too much unemployment or too many Jews, and bamm! -- system collapse.

Slight problem here: that is not how the Weimar Republic ended and the Third Reich began. Weimar did not collapse. It was deliberately murdered by a coalition of establishment conservatives and the extreme right. High government officials, bankers and factory owners, pastors and priests, army officers, old-line aristocratic landowners, some well-placed intellectuals -- those were the establishment conservatives. They were well-situated in powerful institutions like the state bureaucracy, the church hierarchies, big business, and universities, and they disposed of great resources. Yet they whined incessantly because the democracy had limited (though certainly not destroyed) their powers in the revolution that followed World War I and established the Republic. They were anti-democratic, anti-socialist, and anti-Semitic, if less rabidly so than Adolf Hitler and his cronies.

The Nazis were different. They were a hodge-podge of the disenchanted and the disaffected, who found purpose in life through the powerful, virulent rhetoric of Hitler and the promise of a grand national and racial revival. But this movement never could have come to power under its own steam. In the summer of 1932, the depths of the Great Depression in Germany, the Nazis won 37.4 percent of the vote -- a large chunk, to be sure, but not a majority. After that, it was downhill for them all through the fall of 1932. In the next election, their toll slid to 33.1 percent. The Nazi party was in disarray and even Hitler's authority was being challenged by dissidents. Adrift with internal bickering, the Nazis were rescued by the establishment conservatives around the inept and semi-lucid president, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, who named Hitler chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Amid economic depression and political paralysis in a Republic that had been, in its best days, a beacon of social reform, the establishment types fostered an authoritarian counterrevolution. Ultimately, they got far more than they had bargained for, but for the most part, they stayed the course, all the way through war and genocide and even the utter destruction of Germany, because they, too, hated democracy, despised Weimar's creative and emancipatory spirit, and disliked Jews.

German has a good word for all this: "Salonfähig," meaning, colloquially, making someone acceptable in polite society. That's what the establishment conservatives did with Hitler and the Nazis. And that is the real Weimar lesson: when establishment conservatives play with the extreme right, draw them into the political system, make their ideas acceptable, then democracy is truly in danger.

Actually, Weitz is saying the opposite of what I said, after establishing the factual basis against his own argument. Let me be clear:

1) Weimar was a full sellout which managed to be both ineffective and isolated. "Liberalization" my ass. They had to have the German Left at a minimum, and instead they murdered the Left, while also having no program for satisfying the Army, German reaction or German Capital.

2) Nevertheless, "Salonfähig" my ass. It was the Army, German reaction and German Capital which put the NSDAP into power. They did it, not because they made it "acceptable", but because they themselves were out of options and had no fear of the central government.

3) The reason the parallels to the USA today are cosmetic is because no such overriding need for US capital to overthrow the status quo exists. It is the opposite which is dominant. Fascism in America is a non-movement with a non-program... because it "solves" nothing.

...or does anyone really believe that it is required "in order to take away our freedoms"?

Actually, Weitz is saying the opposite of what I said, after establishing the factual basis against his own argument. Let me be clear:

1) Weimar was a full sellout which managed to be both ineffective and isolated. "Liberalization" my ass. They had to have the German Left at a minimum, and instead they murdered the Left, while also having no program for satisfying the Army, German reaction or German Capital.

2) Nevertheless, "Salonfähig" my ass. It was the Army, German reaction and German Capital which put the NSDAP into power. They did it, not because they made it "acceptable", but because they themselves were out of options and had no fear of the central government.

3) The reason the parallels to the USA today are cosmetic is because no such overriding need for US capital to overthrow the status quo exists. It is the opposite which is dominant. Fascism in America is a non-movement with a non-program... because it "solves" nothing.

...or does anyone really believe that it is required "in order to take away our freedoms"?






Shoulda been more emphatic with my caveat. I haven't a clue how he managed the interpretation he gives based on the factual evidence he alludes to

i think before commenting i'd better read up on weimar & clarify my own thoughts.

there are too many angles. i gotta pick one.

btw, care to talk to this guy?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6537031

i think before commenting i'd better read up on weimar & clarify my own thoughts.

there are too many angles. i gotta pick one.

btw, care to talk to this guy?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6537031


Sorry for my lateness but maybe it will be useful elsewhere...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6539205

i think before commenting i'd better read up on weimar & clarify my own thoughts.

there are too many angles. i gotta pick one.

btw, care to talk to this guy?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6537031


Sorry for my lateness but maybe it will be useful elsewhere...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6539205



Its useful to me anyway! still trying to get a handle on all this, and you help alot. Don't get the Greek chorus might be paraphrasing, polstalinpotjoe, could you clarify?

i think before commenting i'd better read up on weimar & clarify my own thoughts.

there are too many angles. i gotta pick one.

btw, care to talk to this guy?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6537031


Sorry for my lateness but maybe it will be useful elsewhere...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6539205



Its useful to me anyway! still trying to get a handle on all this, and you help alot. Don't get the Greek chorus might be paraphrasing, polstalinpotjoe, could you clarify?


To the liberals they're boogiemen and we all know libs are against "butchery" unless its ratified by Congress (or unless the President orders it..or at least its "necessary"..or barring that, it at least has to be "unavoidable" and of course always with the interest of the butchered in mind.."for their own good")

i think before commenting i'd better read up on weimar & clarify my own thoughts.

there are too many angles. i gotta pick one.

btw, care to talk to this guy?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6537031


Sorry for my lateness but maybe it will be useful elsewhere...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6539205



Its useful to me anyway! still trying to get a handle on all this, and you help alot. Don't get the Greek chorus might be paraphrasing, polstalinpotjoe, could you clarify?


I interleaved Pol Pot with Joe Stalin. The two are the usual stock in trade of the red-baiters. 'Course, Pol Pot was nobody's kinda "commie" and he was supported by the U.S. and overthrown by Socialist Vietnam. Stalin, on the other hand, gets his "death count" inflated by 20. They always throw in the death toll from the Civil War, the famines, and sometimes WW2.

You never get that far, though...

i think before commenting i'd better read up on weimar & clarify my own thoughts.

there are too many angles. i gotta pick one.

btw, care to talk to this guy?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6537031


Sorry for my lateness but maybe it will be useful elsewhere...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6535501&mesg_id=6539205



Its useful to me anyway! still trying to get a handle on all this, and you help alot. Don't get the Greek chorus might be paraphrasing, polstalinpotjoe, could you clarify?


I interleaved Pol Pot with Joe Stalin. The two are the usual stock in trade of the red-baiters. 'Course, Pol Pot was nobody's kinda "commie" and he was supported by the U.S. and overthrown by Socialist Vietnam. Stalin, on the other hand, gets his "death count" inflated by 20. They always throw in the death toll from the Civil War, the famines, and sometimes WW2.

You never get that far, though...



Dhal has been talking alot about Mao (and posting his crummy poetry..rimshot!!) and he is another example of the same phenomenon. It is kind of hard to blame all of the deaths from "isolation" on Mao, considering that even if Mao wasn't crazy on that point, it was an "enforced" isolation anyway (all of the capital going to the "developed countries" postwar). But even taking all of that into account life expectancy still nearly doubles while China is a socialist country -- going from a ghastly 35 (yeah, I doubled checked that) to about 65 I think.

Pretty hard to figure how they can throw Pol Pot in anyone's face when fucking Kissinger was insisting on recognizing the Khmer Rouge until the late 70s..but nobody accused these dumb fucks of having much in the way of brains

The Weimar state was the clean up detail for a crushing defeat of an entire nation. It wasn't like losing in Viet Nam or exiting Iraq and Afghanistan (when that happens). It was Doomsday. Before WWI, the Germans were on a roll as Anax pointed out. They came head to head with the British Empire when the Germans began building rail connections to the Middle East to compete for oil, vital to their ongoing economic expansion. Somehow they thought they were the equal of Napoleon and made one seriously flawed move.

Britain and the United States demanded huge reparations from Germany, largely to pay off the financial sectors of both nations which had extended huge credits for war making. That was it for Germany. Hyper inflation raged and you literally needed shopping carts to carry around currency at the worst of it.

While the nation decayed, the right win built an extensive paramilitary organization that included many public officials and the police. In "The SS, Alibi of a Nation - 1922-1945," Gerald Reitlinger outlines this thorough and relentless process. It began as the Friekorps and sympathizers and formed a continuous thread to what this movement eventually became - the SS. This was no accident. It was planned.


"Between 1918 and 1923 it had been impossible for a young German of good family, unless he chose the extreme left in politics, to avoid joining either a Friekorps unit or one of the civilian guard corps which sprang into being."

"Deprived of the finely evolved balance of a two - party system, the Weimar Republic had constantly to resort to force in internal affairs."

Karl Severing, a Social Democrat Minister of the Interior used both the Friekorps and the Prussian Black Reichswehr to attack Communists and workers throughout the country.

We have not lost a war (other than the class war) and we're not nearly as polarized as Weimar Germany. However, we have a movement within the military and the police that poses significant threats to citizens.

The military's encouragement of evangelism within the ranks is disturbing. The worst of it was in the Air Force. That was addressed when Gates fired the Secretary of the Air Force, the Chief of staff and went down to the mid level officer corp over the failures in the "nuclear enterprise" and also procurement. That had the effect of purging many of the religious zealots. But the influence is still there at a significant level.

More disturbing is the enlistment of local police in large cities to the cause of authoritarianism. It's simply not possible to have a mass protest unless tens of thousands hit the streets. The police routinely roll out these ridiculous SWAT type paramilitary units and knock the crap out of people. For what - showing up.

This is much narrower than the Weimar polarization where real battles took place but it's ominous in that it suppresses the willingness to show up b generating fear of the consequences.

Our paramilitaries are much better trained and equipped but they're fewer in number and aimed at quieting the public rather than at attacking a political party (both parties approve of this approach to public demonstrations).

One area where we've exceeded Weimar is the empowerment of the executive to rule by emergency decree. The Weimar constitution had one article that allowed this. Congress has provided the president with many options for emergency rule, i.e., dictatorial. It would take little for a president to cook up a Reichstag fire type event and assume command. He or she would have a "professional mlitary" and police around the country eager to beat down any who disagreed in public.

All in all, there are not that many particulars where we line up with Weimar. But in the area of general foreboding - knowing something really dreadful is about to happen - we are one with the awake Germans of that era.

"It began as the Friekorps and sympathizers and formed a continuous thread to what this movement eventually became - the SS. This was no accident. It was planned."

This is the angle I was thinking of on R v. L in germany when I started this thread - the planned/manufactured quality of the media-hyped right v. left polarization in the US.

I realize there's a difference between the freikorps & reds fighting in the streets & the teabaggers v. acorn or whatever might represent the current polarity, but i still feel there's something similar in the underlying essence of the conflict.

maybe wrong, but my opinion.

history repeats itself, the second time as virtual reality, or something.

I dunno I think the teabaggers are just a bunch of superannuated Birchers.

When we see these militia outfits collaberating with the cops then we're in trouble.

At that point it might be too late.

I dunno I think the teabaggers are just a bunch of superannuated Birchers.

When we see these militia outfits collaberating with the cops then we're in trouble.

At that point it might be too late.


Agree on all points, bp.

"It began as the Friekorps and sympathizers and formed a continuous thread to what this movement eventually became - the SS. This was no accident. It was planned."

This is the angle I was thinking of on R v. L in germany when I started this thread - the planned/manufactured quality of the media-hyped right v. left polarization in the US.

I realize there's a difference between the freikorps & reds fighting in the streets & the teabaggers v. acorn or whatever might represent the current polarity, but i still feel there's something similar in the underlying essence of the conflict.

maybe wrong, but my opinion.

history repeats itself, the second time as virtual reality, or something.



It's happening in Virginia on the first Tuesday in November. Virginia saw huge turnout to vote for what they thought Obama was, a progressive politician (don't blame the voters, that was planned too). There had never been turnout like this in the history of the state. The 2008 Presidential Primary was 3.5 times the vote of the 2004 Presidential Primary (and that was hotly contested).

Now, one year later, the Democrats are running the worst candidate imaginable and the Republicans are about to sweep the state. Why? Because the Democrats who voted in 2008 are not voting this time, not out of protest, just because the candidate is a stiff.

What will Virginia get:

Governor - Republican, graduate of Pat Robertson's law school; as right wing as you can get; took the VA A.G. race in 2005 under highly questionable circumstances. The guy got Consdervative Citizens Council money in 2005 and it was documented. He slick but totally out of touch with the majority. They won't know what hit them.

Attorney General - Extremist, says people who have abortions/doctors are "murderers." Most right wing candidate in state's history, according to the candidate himself. He will be an even bigger nightmare.

So here, two extremists of the worst sort will have their way with the area that includes one of the worlds leading high tech areas, where people hate this right wing crap but DO NOT pay attention. Sometimes, indifference is the vehicle. It will be a total mess.

wow. The failure of liberal reform breeds reactionaries. interesting to see if this is repeated elsewhere, i'm thinking it will be.

wow. The failure of liberal reform breeds reactionaries. interesting to see if this is repeated elsewhere, i'm thinking it will be.




Every time... Consider the issues. Obama has gone far to demonstrate that the Democrats are too corrupt, too wimpy, too intertwined with the "old regime", too stuck on their own issues, too insensitive to the conditions of working people and too lacking in a program to rule. He had to be FDR. Instead, he does Silent Cal with an LBJ foreign policy. Whoever he doesn't drive to the Republicans, he will depress on election days.

In that way, there is a Weimar similarity.

"Obama has gone far to demonstrate that the Democrats are too corrupt, too wimpy..."

For sure. & completely predictable if one looked at his big backers. Which most of his little backers didn't want to do.

Speaking of which, I ponder cynically on the reasons the Dems might have figured the worst economic crisis since the Depression was a good time to nominate its first (real) black candidate.

"Obama has gone far to demonstrate that the Democrats are too corrupt, too wimpy..."

For sure. & completely predictable if one looked at his big backers. Which most of his little backers didn't want to do.

Speaking of which, I ponder cynically on the reasons the Dems might have figured the worst economic crisis since the Depression was a good time to nominate its first (real) black candidate.




I have a friendly skirmish going with Chlamor about Obama. He was absolutely certain that Obama would immediately reveal himself to be a complete tool. I needle him that all Obama had to do was to pull off a few purely cosmetic stunts up front and he would have been golden for a few years. Chlamor is adamant. "Nope".

Of course, he's right.

No subtlety in the Empire, these days.