Welcome to the Thursday edition of The Mark Steyn Show, in which Mark looks at this month's Hitler, last month's Hitler, the constitutionally permitted degree of electoral fraud, and through it all the sound of raucous laughter coming from the Politburo. There's also another edition of The Hundred Years Ago Show, with an old-school State of the Union, a moonshine shootout, the sound of one hand clapping in Mexico, and a withdrawal from the League of Nations. And we take five with Swedes, Jamaicans and Stevie Wonder.
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Mark will be back right here at SteynOnline with tonight's episode of Psmith, Journalist by P G Wodehouse this evening, and tomorrow afternoon for another edition of our Clubland Q&A, taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members around the planet. That's Friday live at 4pm North American Eastern - 9pm Greenwich Mean Time.
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72 Member Comments
Excellent as ever! Thank you Mark!
My favorite sung rendition of Take Five is done by Al Jarreau. What a pleasure to hear the back story on that song!
Cher Mark,
Thank you for this (though my roommate gave me a funny look when she saw the title ("Hitler of the Week" and the accompanying photo)).
Loved the bit about Dave Brubeck. My community choir performs a "Take Five"-inspired version of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen" for our Christmas concert (none this year, of course...sigh). Fun to sing!
Mark replies:
"God Rest Ye Merry" lends itself to that, Ellen. But, of course, this year merry gentlemen are forbidden by public order.
Paul Desmond was fantastic on this track , and many more
Cheers.
My vote for best vocal Take Five:
Al Jarreau
Sorry. Joe Biden's version won peoples' choice with an astounding surge of votes in late counting.
When Podesta and Company "war gamed" the election I can think of some of their advantages and a big one, as Mark knows is "the clock". The Left flooded the zone with a full on saturation of all forms of fraud. The usually slow upward submission of suits would take forever... literally. In today's Nevada decision we learn that sworn affidavits and volumes of data is "hearsay" and that ... anyway... time has run out for the regular plodding course of law... so move along and accept the results. All forms of evidence now are "hearsay". The legal system is ill equipped for mass fraud and too ponderous for the quick response needed in a time of crisis. Voting is no longer a right to be defended, just endured and marginally tolerated. Sorry Ben... we didn't keep it... too much of a nuisance.
So when the civil war gets going, will the DNC ask Xi to help, or will his 5th column volunteer anyway?
As Mark Did Mark just take us through 5 versions of Take 5 ? I tthought the last one would be Lamberts Hendricks and Ross.
Brubeck played the Town Tavern in Toronto during the early 60s . The jazz artists of the day all passed through and it was affordable !
A very enjoyable take Mark.
Perhaps in a Part II on Dave Brubeck, MS can consider (1) Brubeck's WWII history (accounts contradict one another) and (2) Brubeck's music in film -- from snippets inserted to more.
Hearing the reference to the shooting in the hamlets of Bell and Knox 100 years ago I was put in mind of the resourceful young lady who made the headlines a few years ago by paying her tuition fees with the proceeds of her film career, which also involved a fair amount of banging.
Is AG Barr being dishonestly pilloried?
Thought his statement ended with "as of yet" or words to that effect. Could be wrong.
I had high hopes for AG Barr and dismissed those who thought he was just another Deep State functionary churning out paperwork to no apparent purpose. I think I have come over to that point of view. "As of yet" is probably printed on all DOJ stationery as the official closing for every piece of correspondence. They need to change the official heading on said stationery to Department of Process though.
I've been mulling over this all day, Robert.
As of yet, we are not making progress.
Barr is letting us think that, perhaps, we will have some jam tomorrow.
But tomorrow never comes.
Whilst one may think he is being pilloried, there is no sign that he is feeling pilloried.
Yes he is, in my opinion, R. He seems to me to have been nothing but a credit to the Republican administration, and it seems to me that the scurrilous attacks on him by Democrats for partisanship have been despicable. Attacks on him for non-partisanship from my own side of politics have therefore seemed at once laughable and embarrassing.
But there you are. I guess I have no right to claim ownership of any particular wing of politics. One has to reconsider one's own position.
Here at last are not one, but two, watershed moments for the president. Obamacare...bust. Judges, meh. I worship who I choose the way I choose because God made me this way, not black robed ninnies who have made such stellar decisions as "separate but equal" and Roe v. Wade. Deregulation...always a fan but it was too late for the firestorms that wrecked so many in California. Still, every little bit helps.
Now the traitorous jackals in the Senate have approved unanimously the uncapped influx of Chinese and Indian tech workers, at the same time their political counterparts across the nation are wrecking small business America and there has never been so many Americans absent from the workforce.
I doubt the House will give Trump the chance to veto such a bill, lame duck that he is, but I am now all in for Hitler burning down the Reichstag, because it obviously doesn't matter to the elites what happens to the average American. They just want the president to go away quietly, and quit pointing out the flaws in our failing system. Logic dictates America needs those two Georgia senate seats to go Red if America is to have a chance to remain America but is there anyone without a Harvard degree who doubts the hypocrisy of the Senate's big tech show trials after such a vote on a law called "The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act".
So...hope the Republicans hold Georgia because there is not much sense in rushing the demise of the Republic, but it has been a spectacle to watch the various folks in government and the media dance around the fraud issue. I have always been a paleoconservative, but I might just be ready for a populist nationalist party. May as well...because I am already Hitler because the murder of innocents and the assault on my faith offends me.
Mark, do you think victories in Georgia are anything more than a butterfly bandage on a blown artery? And if Donald Trump manages to not ruin himself with the election challenges and his seeming inability to find or manage proper personnel and resources, how does this new populism take flight, with or without Trump? Just asking for a friend who is still nursing his Tea Party wounds...
Mark, I loved your tribute to Dave Brubeck. My high school band director in Santa Barbara was one of Dave's older brothers, Henry Brubeck, a character and something of a legend in his own right. Henry was very proud of Dave, who had made the cover of Time Magazine in 1954. In appearance and mannerisms the two could almost have been twins.
I was close enough to "Uncle Henry" that I easily slipped into our bandroom one night circa 1961-62 to meet Dave and the quartet as they prepared before performing in our school's auditorium in a benefit for our band. Cool guys, to say the least, and Dave was very gracious to me when Henry introduced us.
Dave sent Henry an excellent band arrangement still in manuscript of the quartet's Unsquare Dance arranged by Howard, the third eminent Brubeck brother, which I once conducted while drum major. It actually worked quite well because we played it standing in place on the field – we didn't try marching to that 7/4 time signature! Come to think of it, I'm probably among the few high school students who has ever conducted a piece in 7/4 time at a football game halftime show. It's an accomplishment enclosed in a very small niche, but I'm still flaunting it.
Thanks for another great show, for letting me share my memories, and allowing me to focus for a pleasant change on some counting that doesn't involve ballots.
Mark replies:
You may be undervaluing that accomplishment, Brian. It's entirely possible you're the only high school student ever to conduct a 7/4 piece at a football game.
When my daughter was in high school she tried to develop a solo color guard routine (that's where they twirl and toss flags, rifles etc) to Take 5. It could have been pretty cool but never quite came together. 1-2-3 1-2 1-2-3 1-2. I did see a video once of a professional couple square dancing to Unsquare Dance and that was impressive.
American High School and College Bands were grand to this visiting Aussie.
Nothing like it here. Peasants that we are.
Cheers.
The AG is raising the barr for electoral fraud.
#NothingToSeeHere #EstablishmentSwamp
Would these judges and DOJ types avoid a true Constitutional crisis in the making at any cost? Silly me.
The most powerful message is not the President's, but that of decent ordinary citizens, as you observed:
"I see the present hearings around the country by Guliani with many brave Americans (name, sworn affidavit, and cellphone filmed by the Left in the meetings) laying out the major fraud findings in this election."
Barr's statement looks positively Banana Republic in this context. And the CCTV footage of pallets of ballots being wheeled out from under tables after the scrutineers are sent home is hard to beat.
If there's ever another Republican president, it's clear that he or she is going to have to go outside the box for an Attorney General and other cabinet officials who are not loyal to the Washington establishment.
Many brave Americans who have put their freedom on the line under the penalty of perjury for this theft are treated as if they're a story from the National Inquirer of the people who just witnessed a UFO landing and we're being told to ignore them. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton committed perjury and got no jail time, more endorsements, more money, and the only "punishment" he got was he lost his law license.
Well - that was an awesome show.
As the cliché has it, I know nothing about music, but I like the sound it makes. 3/4 time, waltz, 4/4, 5/4 - not a clue. Someone else, another woman, died smoking abed in the Mark Steyn Show, a few weeks back. It's bad for you. Smoking in bed, that is.
Good show today, but excellent review of Take Five and recap of Brubeck's life. I still think that generation soldiered on, and wasn't as timid and fearful as we seem to have become.
I've long since stopped buying the "deaths by Chinese virus" numbers.
We're in peak flu season, and US "recorded" flu deaths are down 70%. Only a few hundred in the UK.
We're supposed to believe that the people who would have been killed by flu died of Wuhan.
But Wuhan and flu work differently so there should be two tracks running concurrently.
In a Venn diagram of flu deaths we should show two partially-overlapping circles, but apparently the flu circle is inside the Wuhan circle.
"We're in peak flu season..." -- Correct, but more than that we are in peak death season. US expected deaths shift from approximately 7,500 per day to 8,000 per day in mid November. The frailest (because of age, illness, both) among us begin to succumb in greater numbers to what is our ultimate fate. In most years, it's late Jan. or early Feb. (depends a lot on weather) when the peak of deaths is reached, and then begins to drop. The point you make about flu deaths being down dramatically is correct and extremely important. Deaths from pneumonia and heart ailments are also "down" -- why is that? Yes, for those following along, they are being attributed to the virus (will not even name it/and do not get me started on the use of all caps for a five-letter acronym, which is another way -- the caps -- to signal fear).Please all who want gain an understanding of expected deaths and the death hysteria that's been concocted, go to the CDC website and study the graph (kept up-to-date in near real-time) for expected deaths and the overlay of the virus deaths.
I have total disregard for the Wuhan body count. Don't they count any death of a person who is infected with Wu Flu as a covid death? George Floyd was covid positive when he died and they counted that as a covid death. In my community, a motorcyclist was involved in a serious accident and later died at the hospital. Prior to his passing, he tested positive for covid and he too was counted as a covid death. Our state publishes the number of covid "deaths" by age group. More than 50% of the covid "deaths" are in the 80+ age group. Well, duh. People in their 80's have a higher propensity to die more so than people in their 20's. Undoubtedly there have been individuals who truly succumbed to Kung Flu but I'm guessing it's probably substantially less than 1% of the reported deaths. Older people with respiratory illness, heart conditions, severe diabetes, etc. who are included in the Wuhan body count probably just so happened to be covid positive when they succumbed to their pre-existing condition, just like George Floyd or the deceased motorcyclist. It's frightening how little push back there is against policy makers who are abusing their power and laying waste to vast segments of our society. Children MUST return to school and NOW. Remote learning is a joke, particularly among inner city children and those with learning disabilities. There is no reason for all of this. Unless we change as a people and demand that this stops, we will ultimately end up with everything we deserve.
I'd like to know a little more about Mark's "rather tangential connection to The Specials".
Hi Mark, do you really believe in blaming China for all this coronavirus nonsense??...I like and enjoy most everything you say and cover and you provide such clarity, but you puzzle me about covid....China did not make us lockdown, and if I'm not wrong you don't even agree the lockdown is needed...our own military apparently knew about this strange disease (oddly, after the hotel was hit with it where our military was staying for athletic games in Wuhan) before the Chinese did and were warning our allies in Nov 2019 about it so shouldn't we and not China have been telling the world about it and not worried about what China was doing with its flights...why does it matter that Trump and so many world leaders got it, so what, Trump was better in 2 days and you know about hydroxychlroorionquein (sp?)...it's oddly a good thing (or could be) if the vaccine is delayed in this country, even at least one of it's developers has said she won't take it for a year (essentially let others be the lab mice), and why a widespread vaccine anyway for a virus with a kill rate at somewhere about 0.0023% or less (and by the way, apparently the vaccine won't keep you from dying of the virus anyway)...and how can you keep repeating the official death figures when we know, as sure as we know there was election fraud, that many of those figures (as well as the infection figures) are fraudulent...how many who knows?, just like the election fraud, it could be a little or it could be a lot...it just does not seem like you are applying your usual clarity to scapegoating China for how WE reacted to covid....what's got your goat on it?
Pssst, John, pretend you're going outside for a smoke. I'll meet you out there and we'll talk. I have a theory about this. You can't talk about it here in the Clubhouse, though. Mark has hidden mics and cameras everywhere. Not to mention the snitches. Shhhhhh! I told you not to mention the snitches.
The left: You're more likely to be killed by a falling refrigerator than a jihadist.
The right: You're more likely to be killed by a falling refrigerator than a ChiCom virus.
PS. Why did conservatives make such a fuss about 3,000 dead people on 9/11?!
PPS. See WSJ article today by the DNI: "China is national security threat No. 1", including the revelation that: "This year China engaged in a massive influence campaign that included targeting several dozen members of Congress and congressional aides."
PS. Steven Payne says the US has bigger problems than China.
Pay no attention to the Cable Repair van across the street, Steven.
The U.S. and our Giant Kangaroo Running Dogs have a 100 more things to be more worried about with China than the origin of ChiCom-19.
The Left/Dems quickly took control of the situation and all Trump and his administration could do was react. That's the sad reality of the current state of affairs. The Dems attack, the GOP defends. If you are always playing defense you're not going to score any points and you're not going to win, to use a sports analogy. The Democrats immediately identified the opportunity to exploit the virus for their own political gain and that included using it as a cudgel to beat Trump with one last time.
I don't know anything about the U.S. military at sporting events in Wuhan, but the timeline fits. Most scientists believe the virus began circulating among the population in late fall 2019 and was probably already here in the U.S. before Trump instituted the China travel ban. This is a virus that was created in the lab in Wuhan which is a level-4 lab meaning it has the highest security, supposedly, because of the nature of its research, which includes gain-of-function. To his credit, Obama stopped this type of research in 2015 in U.S. labs because of its potential for danger after scientists at University of North Carolina successfully created a hybrid virus using the coronavirus from the Horseshoe bat and human cells. Chinese scientists were also present during this research.
So the Chinese already knew it could be done so why did they create the virus in the Wuhan lab? Was it their intention to purposely infect their own people so they would carry it overseas to the U.S. and Europe? Is it just a coincidence that the virus emerged at the exact time Trump had imposed tariffs on China as part of the "Phase One" of a new trade deal? Most westerners would consider using germ warfare in response to a trade dispute unthinkable, but I believe that's exactly what happened. COVID-19 was a warning shot across the bow to the U.S./Trump and any of China's other trading partners who would dare consider imposing tariffs or negotiating new trade deals unfavorable to China.
It's not about the origin per se - it's the fact that they can get away with it because people can't see the forest for the trees. The ChiComs are so smart that we're diminishing what happened and/ or blaming ourselves.
As Robert Bridges said in a comment a few months back: "When is a war not a war? China unleashed biological warfare upon the world."
#GreyZoneWarfare
And that's the whole point, isn't it, W.? If we go running off after every red herring, the danger arises that the big issue will go unnoticed. Or, differently put, the downside of crying "Wolf" for fun is that there may be a real one lurking nearby. The reason the West must respond honestly in recognising its own gigantic folly in managing the 'flu epidemic and not blame China for it is precisely that China is up to mischief, and there are people who will want China to go about it unchecked on the grounds that it was wrongly blamed for the West's mega-folly.
The boss-man will speak for himself, I'm sure, but for the record I cannot recollect that he actually has blamed China for the poor handling of the 'flu in the West: he has (to my mind legitimately) blamed China for the poor handling of the 'flu which spread it to the West. That is not to say that you said or implied differently, of course.
When I argue that we should in fairness recognise that the world at large didn't know much about the 'flu when it "escaped" from China, it is only with a view to clearing red herrings out of the way, the better to recognise and (one day, perhaps) act on the real threat posed by China. Even such circumstantial matters as closing internal flights and keeping external ones might in some generous views bespeak incompetence rather than malice ('though I myself tend to the latter in my speculations) and should be guarded against as a potential distraction.
There are, as you rightly say, a hundred more things to be more worried about with China than the origin of ChiCom-19. No, come to think of it, my understanding is that the standing complement of the People's Liberation Army exceeds two million, so, personally I'd say that there are at least two million, one hundred more things to be more worried about with China than the origin of ChiCom-19.
You mean that van with the Canadian license plates? Or are they Aussie plates? Either way, I don't know if I want to get into this or not, Walt. I remember the last time I got into it over China, I got an eight minute tongue lashing from Mark on his show and some of my posts never appeared or were edited.
I don't know if I want to go through that again! In fact, I've been so good that I didn't say anything about that big typo in the concluding sentence of Mark's Beatle movie review and I'm not going to say anything about him calling Lin Wood, Lin Ford. Nope, not me!
Well Kate, I was going to disagree with you, but I don't know if I can. I was going to say that my position is that the U.S. has big problems that they should be worried about fixing first and that I don't know what we can do about China. But, when I think about, yeah, we have bigger problems than China. Just for example, we apparently cannot even hold legitimate elections anymore. Just for example, we have a media that has, for the most part, just become full on leftist activists that will tell any lie or bury any story that doesn't serve their purposes.
I could go on, but I ask again, what exactly do you want us to do about China? You quote Robert down there talking about war. Is that what you want, an actual war with China? Sorry, but I don't want that.
- "... we apparently cannot even hold legitimate elections anymore."
Suggest looking at China's role in this, from conducting a pandemic in a key election year; pushing economic lockdowns at the local and state level; instigating major riots by political activists; targeting voter registration and voting systems; and "doing business" with all manner of public officials.
- "Is that what you want, an actual war with China?"
Nope. An acknowledgement of the threat - and sustained attack - would suffice.
"PS. Steven Payne says the US has bigger problems than China."
S - I'm not sure why my comment was reformulated (by Walt) to mention the origin of the virus, especially given the big picture quote by John Ratcliffe about national security.
I've been pretty consistent with comments similar to yours (going back to 2018 - and Clive Hamilton's "Silent Invasion") about the multi-dimensional threat posed by China. That said, I think it's wise to bear in mind that the CCP may already be planning the next pandemic.
PS. Still catching up with prior comment threads.
I agree with the jib of your comment Kate, I think. I believe pretty much everything the mainstream media pushes is false, conservatives tend to believe what they want, leftists tend to believe what they want...all of it should be basically assumed false: the elections not being rigged; the plandemic, its origin, its reaction, the deadliness of the virus, the need for a vaccine when we have hydroxy and Renogen (sp?)...; 9/11 not being an inside job; Israel always the good guy and our ally; climate change being man-made and a big problem....on and on...endlessly fake day in and day out...
No one ever talks about the origins of the virus anymore. If I recall, Trump and Pompeo said they were going to get to the bottom of it but we never heard of any discoveries. Perhaps they know the truth but the Deep State/CIA convinced them to keep quiet for fear it would escalate into an actual war. It's obvious what happened (see my comments to John Schuler) and I don't think the Chinese care if the rest of the world knows they did it deliberately. I think that was their objective.
Agree with you -- wrote much about it here in spring before taking a many-month pause from MS Club in summer because MS kept focusing on deaths instead searching for clarity. We knew early on the virus would spread and spread fast. Why? It's a coronavirus -- highly infectious. And it's not very lethal -- a lethal virus gets stopped in its tracks when its hosts drop dead before they can pass it on. Moreover, it's difficult to detect and it's everywhere -- everywhere (including feces and urine of people who test negative and have no symptoms). It doesn't matter that world leaders got it. Most of us who haven't had it will get it, save perhaps 15 to 20 percent of us. We should never, ever have locked down -- not for a single day. The lockdowns were and are a gift to the left. Courage is what we needed then and what we need now. As for the vaccine and NHS starting to administer it, to date the data on trials has not been published in the United States. If they have been published in UK, please give source. US rules call for trial data to be openly published for any medication before medication is approved. Any prudent person would want to see the trial data. Blaming China or Cuomo (no supporter of either here) or anyone for the spread of the virus is useless. Nothing makes me angrier that the B/H duo blaming Trump. The nature of the virus means that it could not be stopped. (JA in New Zealand is living on fantasy island -- at least for a bit longer). What we need -- and have desperately needed -- from the start is for adults to say, "This is life. We have to carry on. The virus is a threat, but most of us will survive. We do not shut down. We accept the reality of life and death.' (Having taken anti-malarial drugs as prophylactics, I can say there is much useless chatter and no real worry over hydroxychloroquine.)
One of my many personality flaws is that I study a problem just long enough to form an opinion that satisfies me. I'm willing to accept new information but twirling around on a subject without new and valid information just doesn't interest me.
To summarize my understanding of the pandemic, ChiCom-19 may have started in a North Carolina lab, migrated to Winnipeg and on to the Wuhan super lab where it escaped through negligence. Common denominator: Chinese scientists.
Then early this year the Chinese built several emergency hospitals in a matter of days, whistle blowing doctors died and several cities were locked down. What were we supposed to think? The ChiComs claim that they've only had 4000 victims to date. They are lying.
I believe that the ChiComs deliberately worked to infect the crew of the USS Roosevelt while in port in Vietnam. Yes, biological warfare. We are never going to learn the truth about any of this because the Chinese are not going to cooperate.
Then it comes to the reaction of the West to the virus which was and is simply hysteria. The Chinese have opened up and are out dancing because they simply accepted the casualties and are moving on. We have apparently even lost the sense of urgency about making our own pharmaceuticals. What we need to do is an emergency decoupling with China but the Chinese investment in our ruling elites is paying off big time. That topic is fading from discussion. We are in big trouble, at least that is the opinion that I formed after my amateur study of the situation.
Whether or not the West made the correct decision to lockdown after the pandemic began is a different point. We can argue about that all day long. However, if China lays claim to being a functioning state in the civilized world, and a member of the G20, there are certain expectations that pour forth from that. They knew about COVID-19 and kept it quiet, while quarantining Wuhan from the rest of China but not the rest of the world, by virtue of the continuation of international air travel in and out of that airport. That was done on purpose. This wasn't an oopsie. In addition, the WHO was in kahootz with China on it, while U.S. taxpayers were cutting checks for the lion's share of their funding. So, in light of that, why is it not okay to be pissed off at the Chinese Communists and the WHO for what they did? Can you imagine the outrage is the United States had done such a thing? So now we have trillions of dollars of economic damage to clean up. Where does that come from? Reduction in military spending? It's either that or entitlements because those are the only two areas of Federal spending where there's fat to chop off. Which do you think is an easier sell to the public? Which do you think the Chinese are hoping for? This self-hating has got to stop.
Yes on all scores, K. Guess W. and I just like to add our own angles, concerns and notions to the pot when the stew looks like a good one. J. got a particularly rich one going here.
"What we need to do is an emergency decoupling with China but the Chinese investment in our ruling elites is paying off big time." Underscore, highlight vividly, three hosannas and a fireworks display. And please with cream and sugar. That's the pith of it, right there, W.
There should never have been links.
"What we need to do is an emergency decoupling with China but the Chinese investment in our ruling elites is paying off big time."
Umm... I'm pretty sure a few Australians have been saying that in comments since 2018, Walt. And even more urgently in 2020.
As I said, Steven thinks the US has bigger problems than China, and he's restated that view.
#ForestForTheTrees
You should know that I worry more about Australia's problems with China than I do about the USA's immediate problems. Your economy is more dependent on Chinese trade and they are going to jack you around hard. You are also a sparsely populated country and close enough to be threatened with military invasion. Plus I have a fondness for Aussies from my days in the Solomon Islands. Kiwis too.
I know that some people in Oz are thinking about the need to decouple with the ChiComs and I know that Australia is doing some things better on trade and immigration than we are but your politicians are no better than ours and are just going to wring their hands and dither until it's too late. You'd better not count on our help anymore, the US is collapsing before our eyes.
It's also a coincidence the virus appears at the height of the Hong Kong protests in late 2019.
In parts of Peru, at election time, the parties go around asking potential voters to allow their houses to be painted like a line from the ballot paper, with the candidate's name, the party's name and the distinctive party logo, since not all rural Peruvians can read. The idea is that, if the candidate wins, the house will be painted over, presumably at public expense. What that means is that the countryside reads like a catalogue of failed politicians, including, I recall, one Hitler Gonzalez. The occupant of that one house, I assume, had "HITLER," in block capitals, on display at least until the next election.
So one could argue that it's not only the United States where the elections seem to go on for years.
Hitler has become a metaphysical of personification evil so that even Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) is not even today's HITLER! which is a shorthand reference to Satan (even for atheists.) AH was just a man who lived in a political volatile time in a mean political region that was filled with nasty people. It took a coterie of fanatical henchman to create the despotism of Nazi Germany -- what is referred to as a group effort.
There has always been plenty of tyrants around that compare to the historical Hitler. In his time Lenin and Stalin were easily his match. Today Xi is every bit as bad as Hitler but there are plenty more that have Hitleresque potential if they were granted absolute power and a sufficiently zealous circle around them. Potential tyrants all over the world are working hard to achieve this level of performance and are using ChiCom-19 shutdowns to work out the kinks.
By the metaphysical standard Donald Trump nor anybody else the Left shouts at is not even close to being HITLER!
I'll cherish that, W.: the nazis were a group effort. You're dead right, of course: it is only in mythology that all evil (or all good, for that matter) is attributed to one person. Or to one side of a conflict. Or to everybody who speaks any particular language. Or even to everybody who votes Democrat, much as it galls me.
The nazis were a group effort. The Democrats are a group effort. I can work with that.
Hitler is today used by Democrats to silence opposition. For once Hitler is invoked in any discussion, one must agree with the speaker or risk being perceived as agreeing with Hitler.
Hitler has become a metaphysical manifestation of evil...
I often wish I could edit my comments after I push SUBMIT.
It has even been codified by Godwin's Law: If a discussion goes on long enough, someone will compare someone or something to Hitler, effectively ending the discussion.
G., I gather he did a fair job of silencing opposition in life. Doing it this long after his death, now that's really impressive.
Old enough to remember when the Lefts newest heartthrob W Bush was 'literally Hitler.' Backstabbing hypocrites
Hitler, check.
Lenin, check.
Stalin, check.
Even President Eleven is name-checked.
And not a word for My Man Mao? My chubby-cheeked ChiCom Chum beats all of y'all's genocidal despots in body count. Number One with a bullet. You want to hate on Hitler (the og, not the Namibian-come-lately), fine. Don't blame you, save me a seat. But this is Western bias at its worst. I expect Asians to be discriminated against at Ivy League schools. But here in the MSC? Not while I'm drawing breath. As long as he doesn't post any URLs, Mao is welcome as my guest for a nice cuppa any time. Or something stronger if he's up for it. I'd love to hear his old war stories.
And to smear their political enemies. It's nothing new. In George Stephanopolous' Clinton White House memoir, he revealed that when they were planning to go after a certain Republican their gleeful battle cry was, "It's Nazi time!" meaning they planned to publicly discredit them by calling them a Nazi.
This was back in the 90's, but it illustrates the evolution of the Left's strategies and shifting allegiances. The Right would never make such slanderous comparisons, in large part because it trivializes,denigrates and dishonors all those who suffered and died from actual Nazi persecution.
But in the 21st century, the name-calling is still effective, especially with the young, because they only have a vague idea of who Hitler was and what Nazism was all about. As Mark so succinctly put it in his latest Rush broadcast: "They think Trump is the New Hitler, but they don't know anything about the Old Hitler!" I'm paraphrasing, of course.
I may be older Drew, since I can recall my undergraduate classmates in MA calling Ronald Reagan "Hitler". What's funny now is my inability to find a Democrat of relevant age who will admit to even having disliked Reagan. The targets change but Leftist behavior never does.
"Group effort" -- yes, and it's a point Hannah Arendt covers in several contexts, noting that by 1933 everyone knew what the nazis were doing. And to Walt Trimmer, yes, ask the Finns about Stalin, for instance. In any case, what's most troubling is the outlook of the very left publications in the United States in the 1930s, which are often one and the same today. Well into the late 1930s, the New Yorker and The New York Times ran articles (check their archives) about H's art (TNY) and his mountain retreat (NYT). In 1939, NYT carried an item about Princeton freshmen voting H "greatest living human" with Chamberlain second and Einstein third.
Mark only gives us 2500 characters. I also left out the North Korean Kim's, Pol Pot and a host of others too numerous to mention.
I notice you didn't spell out Mao's full name. The ChiComs keep changing the spelling and calling us running dog racists for Tze Tung. Does anyone know how to pronounce the new X's, Q's and Z's?
Brilliant, J. Take a gold check!
Thanks, D. That helps to fill in the gaps.
One of the interesting things about music is that it can evoke long dormant memories. I've recently been digitizing old VHS tapes from my long-ago involvement with the world of figure skating. First in free style competitions, and then in the field of synchronized skating. During my time in that world, I was involved in running many local and regional competitions and my wife was also a medical volunteer in national level competitions. During this time, I had a chance to meet many national and international competitors, in singles, pairs, dance and synchro.
For some perverse reason, I often became a "fan" of lesser known skaters, people who I thought were often under-appreciated. Occasionally, I got to meet them, like Nancy Kwan (older sister of a much more famous Kwan skater) and Tonia Kwiatkowski, who managed to snag a US bronze medal.
One skater who I never got to meet, but I still admired was Amber Corwin. She was a bit stiff, had some posture issues, and was lacking in some element firepower (but she did have a triple-triple before most ladies). What reminded me of Amber was Dave Brubeck's Take Five. She skated to this music and that program was very memorable. In the skating world, some music just "belongs" to some skaters. Tara Lipinski "owns" Little Women and Much Ado About Nothing, and Michelle Kwan "owns" East of Eden. But for me, Amber Corwin "owns" Take Five. Thanks for the memories.
Hitler is not an unusual name in Africa. It is given to sons in commemoration of a mythical figure whose very name seemed to terrify whites. There are many more common names in the same vein. Mandla (or Amandla) attributes to the bearer of the name the power and energy to force whites out of the land; Dluzula (often shortened to Zula) endows the bearer with the capacity of violence; Hlaselo (often shortened to Selo) translates as assault or attack, and you'll never guess who should be so attacked. Jah has the answers. The people who bear these names did not choose them. Their fathers did. It would be disrespectful to change one's given name even if one wanted to.
As the bearer of an unfashionable name myself, I urge tolerance in relation to personal features not exactly chosen by the people with unchosen but unfashionable features. I'm even thinking of being nicer to short people. Stands to reason. Somebody has to play scrum-half. Okay, I'm an idiot.
From matters cultural to matters legal, it works better in criminal law to prosecute perpetrators than to prosecute the beneficiaries of their crimes or the sects, gangs or organisations to which they belong, as a general rule. Sometimes beneficiaries of crimes can be punished, such as dealers in stolen goods, but even then it goes better when their own activities have been made criminal in their own right through legislation. It also works better when the punishment is visited on the convicted perpetrator. Sometimes, as in the case of Charles Manson, it is possible to convict somebody of a crime which he did not actually commit himself, but there is a considerable burden of proof of complicity and incitement which must first be satisfied.
It is not my business to preach respect for the law, not least because I do not respect everybody involved in legislation, but there are some basic principles which I suggest should not be tossed to the winds until better principles come along.
My great grandfather born in 1860 was named after Stephen A. Douglas who defeated Abraham Lincoln for Senate in 1858 and ran against Lincoln in 1860 for President. This of course, means that my great-great grandparents were Illinois Democrats. While I find this embarrassing, I am hoping that this is a trait that skips generations or was genetically canceled out by the other branches of the family tree.
;D !!!! You're in great nick, W.: nothing to worry about!
Mind you, that comes from me. Maybe you should worry.
Greg asked where the video is..
It's now out. Shows GA DNC operatives disguised as impartial ballot counters stuffing the ballot machines during the "pause".
Dear FBI - I wish to report criminal negligence by AG Barr and the FBI.
Where is the FBI? The world wonders.