On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century was a best-seller at the beginning of the Trump regime and a favorite of my book group. Recent events sent me searching for Timothy Snyder's thin volume of warnings from which I extract the following (with commentary by me):
1. Do not obey in advance. (For you, Republican Senators.)
2. Defend institutions. (Lawyers, Prosecutors, Judges--pay close attention.)
3. Beware the one-party state. (DNC get your shit together!)
5. Remember professional ethics. (Law schools, law firms, judiciary committees, and
the ABA--hold officials responsible or you will be held responsible. [AND appending journalism per the discussion in comments below.])
Timothy Snyder is a historian specializing in Soviet policy in the Ukraine (1930s) and in post-WW2 developments and detritus in Eastern Europe. He knows whereof he speaks.
Raber has just finished Madeleine Albright's "Fascism," a companion to Hannah Arendt's " Totalitarianism." He has been offering lessons from both works.
ReplyDeleteWould you add journalistic ethics to #5? I am seeing way too many loaded adjectives in straight news these days that turn into memes: "chaos in the Iowa primary" is really starting to get in my nerves. I also hate the tsking and head shaking of mostly female news anchors (are you listening Just Woodruff and her pet reporter Lisa Desjardin?).
Just = Judy
DeleteHeartily join the call for inclusion of journalistic ethics.
DeleteToday's NYTimes is gushing with after-New Hampshire two-day old stories. It's over, but then they had all those reporters there gathering tid-bits and opinions. Like the candidates, they need to move on.
Just Judy. No reason to get excited. I do wish the reporters would report that ONLY "duly-elected presidents" can be impeached, since other means would be required to get rid of a usurper. Having explained that, they will never have to use "duly elected" and "impeached" in the same sentence again.
DeleteAlso, it is never news when the Don repeats any of his 1000 classic Tweets, or if he tweets on Wednesday what he already is reported to have tweeted on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
Seeing to those bits of housekeeping would leave room for a lot of real news, even "breaking news." Like how Duterte has announced Yankees should go home because his new bff is China. And will the Don return the nice shirt Rodrigo gave him two years ago?
Judy W: Yes, we cringe at her frequent summing up: "interesting."
DeleteI bought and read Fascism: a Warning shortly after it was published. Nobody I mentioned it to had ever heard of it. Last spring. A friend we see seldom because he lives far away recommended Snyder’s Tyranny. He had given copies to extended family for Christmas. I bought it also . It is short and to the point - and also frightening. I have taken to heart his advice to keep all family passports current! Since all of us, including the babies, have current passports, that’s one box ticked. I am now reading Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom. I tried to reach him a week or so ago through his Yale email, but got an Out of Office reply. For the whole semester! He’s in Europe again doing more research.
ReplyDeleteI have been reluctant to share some of my fears about this administration. I sent many, many emails to our republican friends and family ( most of our family and friends IOW)before the 2016 elections, with a great deal of information, trying to get them to see what. Trump really is. They all fell into line, just like the rest of the GOP, telling me that he wasn’t a danger to our country, that I am paranoid.
But when I read Snyder’s books I at least feel that I am in good company. He is a scholar, an expert on how free countries give up their freedom. Both he and Albright note that in the western nations, the people gave up their freedom to people they had elected themselves.
I have feared this possibility since spring 2016 when trump locked up the nomination.
If he wins re-election, .....I am still paranoid. But he has been doing exactly what I had feared, and it will just get worse.
Anne,
DeleteI guess I'm seeing happen what was probably the best argument against impeachment. He will now see himself as cleared for dictatorship.
As for your relatives, if you showed them a duck and they say it's a horse, what more can you say to them?
It's always been obvious to me what Trump is.
Anne, I share your concern. But if it's any comfort, Trump really isn't very bright, exsept in kind of a feral way. I also don't think he's very healthy, in a mental sense, and maybe not in a physical sense. I don't know that he's capable of seguing into president-for-life mode, even though that would appeal to his vanity. I'm actually more worried about the people he has surrounded himself with. And McConnell, who has demonstrated how to get around constitutional and legal restraints. You just ignore them and do whatever the hell you want to.
DeleteKatharine, trump is a master con artist. Someone here, Tom I think, often alludes to him as a mafia don-type. But my fears lie in what you have alluded-to - he has surrounded himself with people who also lust for power and long-term dominance of the country. They are happy to keep him as a figurehead while they manipulate the strings in Congress, in DoD, in the intelligence agencies, at DoJ etc. unless his health fails, they will prop him up. Look at what happened in the Vatican with JPII. They literally propped him up at the window! Read Snyder and Albright. I would love to hear some opinions from all here! Jean could have Raber give us his thoughts. I respect all here as solid thinkers, so maybe you all can calm my nerves. But, we’ll still keep our passports current! ��
ReplyDeleteAs regards passports, since you have family living overseas, it makes sense for you to keep that option open. We wouldn't have anywhere to go, if it were going to involve a longish stay. Besides, other countries are having their angsty moments now as well. I'm not sure they'd treat Americans any better than we are currently treating immigrants. Unless of course they have lots of money. So we'll probably just stay put and hope for the best. And vote blue in November.
DeleteAnne, you asked what we think:
DeleteWe started a long slide away from being the republic the framers thought they created almost before The Don took office. The end was confirmed when the Senate refused to take impeachment seriously and confirmed what The Don suspected: He can do anything as long as he has a Republican House or Senate. If both tilt against him, watch for a series of arrests, disappearances and criminal trials of "duly elected" Congresscritters to redress the balance. He is having Air Force One repainted in what looks like Trump Organization colors (except for the gold "TRUMP" on the tail, and that is probably next). Now he wants to personally approve Washington architecture so it will make America look great again.
American citizens, including native-born, have been detained and deported by ICE and the Border Patrol, both of which are now laws unto themselves. The Don makes political speeches to military units and professes his love for them in ways that surely look as if he expects those Fourth of July tanks to protect him if he has to hunker down in the White House after the election.
The local MAGA wearer gave me an article (by Brent Bozell, I think) exuding the vapours because someone dared to compare The Don to Adolf Hitler. I thought about it, and returned it with ten ways in which the comparison is unfavorable to Hitler. Examples:
1. Hitler wrote his own book. Trump needed a ghost writer.
2. Hitler fought in war and earned a decoration. Trump nursed a bone spur.
3. Hitler never gave the Medal of Freedom to Goebbels.
4. Hitler drew bigger crowds.
5. Hitler never had to pay off a porn star.
And so on for five more.
People think it will all go away. It may not. And even if it does, it will take years to rebuild the expertise and competence he has fired or driven out of government.
True believers tell me, "Well what about all the crimes Obama committed?" I ask which crimes they mean, and they start with the pizza parlor with the sex trafficking ring. I tell them that was Hillary, not Obama. Then, with a little help from me, they remember the crime was signing all those illegal unconstitutional executive orders instead of working through Congress. So I remind them of all those pictures of Trump holding up executive orders with his name in big Sharpie, like a newly potty-trained kid looking for reinforcement. That's about where half of the country is mentally. So, yeah, it is worrisome.
Is there anywhere a list of states rating them for their trumpiness? Perhaps one could move to one of the least trumpy states and, if things got bad enough, wait for secession.
Delete"If both tilt against him, watch for a series of arrests, disappearances and criminal trials of "duly elected" Congresscritters to redress the balance."
DeleteTom, I love you, but this is crazy talk.
"he has surrounded himself with people who also lust for power and long-term dominance of the country. "
DeleteEven if that's true (and I don't think it is; I think he has surrounded himself with people who scratch his insatiable ego, and whom he'll toss under the bus at the first sign of disloyalty - William Barr, you may have just been added to the list), it's a description of party leadership of both parties. They both lust for power, and they both want to achieve long-term dominance. If this is Trump, he's guilty of politics.
"If this is Trump, he's guilty of politics." Jim, yes, but where do you draw the line between normal political fisticuffs, and abuse of power? I'm thinking of pardoning people found guilty of war crimes by a military court, trying to out a whistleblower, punishing people who testified under oath in an impeachment hearing by firing them, and so on and on.
DeleteRealistically I don't think any of us have to be fearful to the extent that we need to flee the country if Trump gets another term. But it is very dismaying and disheartening to see him blow through legal and constitutional norms and face no consequences.
Katherine - those are excellent reasons to defeat him in the coming election. I guess Job 1 is: present the country with an alternative candidate who can accumulate 270 electoral votes.
Delete"but this is crazy talk." So I would have said before Trump removed Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from the NSC, even though he also removed his twin brother who was guilty only of association, and did it with armed guards. But then, when they had been returned to the Army, he began tweeting that the Army should be planning further punishment for them because one answered a summons from Congress.
DeleteRemembering what happened to the Secretary of the Navy for trying to his job, I can't see how the Army can resist that suggestion. And when that suggestion was made, crazy talk suddenly became sane.
Might not be crazy, but good example of Godwin's Law: Once you start comparing something to Hitler or the Nazis, the conversation is over, i.e., Trump = Hitler or abortion = holocaust.
DeleteSort of akin to John Boehner saying Ted Cruz is "Lucifer incarnate." What is there to say after that? Nothing.
Loved Tom's enumerating five of the ten examples of Hitler bettering Trump. May I add that Hitler liked dogs and Trump is weird about them?
DeleteRachel Maddow mentioned "On Tyranny" on her show last evening and also interviewed Tim Snyder. He is plain-spoken and doesn't mince words. I plan to get the volume and read it. Life in this country has become too frightening anymore and I fear that the continued thrashing of the Democrats will most certainly give us 4 years (and will he leave after that?) of The Orange-faced Menace. And, no, Bloomberg is NOT the Great White Father coming out of the woodwork.
ReplyDeleteStanley: California!
ReplyDeleteYeah, Jimmy. California came to mind. It has a massive economy as well. Here is a map of the US ranked for trumpiness.
Deletehttps://morningconsult.com/tracking-trump-2/
The entire west coast could secede and be contiguous with Canada as well as many northern bordering states. Joining Canada would certainly be preferable to living in a fascist US. Would definitely screw up my pension, though.
To consider Trump a fascist is, in a sense, to give him way too much credit. Fascists had an actual (warped and evil) philosophy and (unimaginably evil) set of policies which, when given the opportunity to pursue, they did, with chilling and ruthless efficiency.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing philosophical, policy-driven or even very efficient about Donald Trump. He is what we get when we manage to elect a person with severe narcissistic personality disorder to the White House. That is not to say he's ok or harmless. He has debased the country and its political institutions in a myriad of ways, and the risk that he will do something catastrophically stupid (or crooked) is always there.
I'm just asking that we distinguish narcissism, stupidity, crookedness and gross incompetence from actual evil.
He's not presidential timber, for all the reasons encompassed by that string of adjectives in the previous sentence, and that should be sufficient reason not to re-elect him.
Jim, hopefully you are right. Trouble is narcissism, stupidity, and incompetence can accomplish a lot of harm as well.
DeleteSo crookedness is not "actual evil"? Whoopee! Heaven is going to have some bodacious bookmakers, grifters, and snake oil salesmen to entertain us!
DeleteI'll give you narcissism as an untreated mental illness. But I don't think Trump is stupid or grossly incompetent, or he would not have been able to wreak so much havoc on migrants, wholly ignore our responsibilities to Puerto Rico, or dismantle/weaken foreign alliances it has taken us decades to build.
Jean - true, crookedness is sinful. But my measure of Trump is that the crookedness we're likely to get from him is the conventional graft and corruption that happens in municipalities and states across the country.
DeleteAs it happens, I think stupidity is capable of explaining a good deal of the bad things you listed. At the top of my list is his cozying up to Erdogan, who immediately attacked the Kurds, who immediately freed thousands of ISIS fighters so the Kurdish guards could protect the homeland from the Turks. And now ISIS is growing again. That's my idea of impeachable stupidity.
So basically you don't see him as any worse than any other politician? Maybe my general state of irritability is making it hard for me to see straight, but you seem to be wanting to condemn Trump without putting him in any special class of "awful," merely "incompetent."
DeleteJim: “Tom, I love you, but this is crazy talk.”
ReplyDeleteJim, it may not be as crazy as you think. Read Albright and Snyder for starters. Neither are kooks and when you read the histories they summarize, you may be surprised by the parallels between the first term of trump and the early years of dictators on the right and left. The “final solution “ was preceded by years of gradual escalation of sowing seeds of distrust and hate towards the scapegoats. And churchgoing Christians, including Eucharist receiving Catholics went along with it, as Hitler escalated the hateful rhetoric and gradually heated the temperature to the boiling point.
However, Germany’s economy was in tatters, which helps explain, if not excuse, the openness to the hate. Find someone to blame. Trump blames the “other” also, for the job losses in specific sectors of the economy, even though immigrants had little to do with these changes.. the disconnect between his blame immigration and free trade rhetoric with what is a strong economy at the moment, built on Obama’s policies, is not obvious to most of his fan base.
Many serious and non-kook thinkers do think it not beyond the realm of possibility that he will try to stay in power longer than 2008. He has already gotten away with more trashing of the balance of powers and the constitution than even I feared in the fall of 2016.
I do think his rhetoric of hate towards Hispanic immigrants, Muslims, and those from s****%hole countries reveals an evil heart. He is scapegoating immigrants of color in the same way that hitler scapegoated the Jews. No president in my lifetime has been so open in expressing such contempt towards the “other”. Few candidates come to mind outside of Wallace.
I think that ripping babies and young children from their parents arms to warehouse in cages, leaving them to sleep on concrete floors, denied even soap and toothpaste, is not just despicable, but evil. He has surrounded himself with people who are willing to design and implement these evil policies.
It’s more than Incompetency and ego. More than normal politics. He literally claims to be above the law. He literally claims that anything he does to get re-elected, using the power of the United States against foreign governments is okay. He literally equates anything that benefits him personally as in the national interest. A huge irony is that the main architect of rhese evil policies aimed at immigrants is Miller - a man who was raised as a Jew. And now denounced by his family rabbi in California and members of his own family. They see the same kind of evil that has been too often directed at Jews for 2000 years. I accept that my fears may be overblown. I pray that they are, but I think too many people have rose-colored glasses on, and may not detect the true extent of the danger now facing our country until it’s too late to easily stop it..
While you are collecting your reading materials, add Constantine’s Sword to the list.
We are traveling again so there are even more typos than usual. Because I am using the iPad. My apologies to all about the errors.
To Miller I would add Steve Bannon, a nihilist who viewed Trump as a stick of dynamite to throw into the status quo. He's not around the White House anymore but his legacy lingers.
DeleteI think it is a mistake to designate The Don as a Fascist, or any other catchall ism. The Don himself, and others, call Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela a "socialist," but it is hard to see much difference between Maduro, who was trying to put Venzuelan oil wealth into his pocket, and Jair Bolsonaro, who is trying to put the wealth from a burned Brazilian Amazon in his pocket. The Don has some kind of objection to Maduro but not to Bolsonaro. Mussolini started as some kind of socialist, and "sozialistische" was the S in NSDAP, the abbreviation Nazi comes from. The point about all of these guys is that their view of order was or is "I, Benito," "I, Der Führer," "I, Nicolas." "I, Claudius," or "I, the Stable Genius."
DeleteAlan Bullock, I believe (the book is in another room, and it is almost time for me to hit the stove) did a double biography on Hitler and Stalin. A double bio of Hitler and Churchill or FDR wouldn't have made much sense.
Another difference between Hitler and Trump is that Hitler didn't have any family members on the state payroll.
How about "Indigenous American Berserk"?
ReplyDeleteIt's local, it covers a lot of history, it could be left, right, or center, and it sounds like something recognizable.
It was attributed to Philip Roth by Michiko Kakutani in a year-end essay in the NYTimes...lamenting the state of the nation.
Margaret, is this the one you mean?
DeleteWell...same phrase; different author.
DeleteHadn't taken it to be a specifically Jewish issue/ phrase/outlook...despite attribution to Philip Roth.
In fact, I think my imagination went back to the sod houses of homesteaders (wife goes berserk from isolation, cold, dead baby, etc.), to the Irish burning down the Orphanage for Negro Children, Mayor Daley sounding the air raid siren for a winning team (Tom, will remember which one), Salem witch trials, lynch mobs, etc....you know the crazy/sad/horrific things that happen right here in the USA; the thing that seem peculiarly our own berserkness.
Where else could Trump have ever become head of state?
Oh, boy, now you've sparked quite a string of memories from reading the police blotter up in the UP. The cops themselves could be pretty berserk at times ...
DeleteMarch is always dicey. People snap from too much winter. Bad time to hold a primary when people are at the end of their tether.
"Mayor Daley sounding the air raid siren for a winning team (Tom, will remember which one)"
DeleteNot Tom, but I think it was White Sox in 1959. Nellie Fox, Luis Aparicio, probably other famous guys I'm not thinking of (also a catcher, I think, whose name I'm not remembering. Who pitched on that team?). Before my time. Made it to the World Series, lost to the Dodgers. Before 2005 on the South Side and then 2016 on the North Side, that counted as baseball success in Chicago for several generations.
So spent a couple of seconds on Google. Sherm Lollar was the catcher. Billy Pierce and Gary Peters must have been starters. Apparently so was Early Wynn, who presumably was a graybeard by then. Norm Cash was on that team, too, never knew that - he was one of my childhood heroes, was the first baseman on the 1968 Tigers team that won it all.
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/roster.php?y=1959&t=CHA
Sorry for the digression. Back to the discussion.
Yeah, Early Wynn, late in his career. I was abroad, keeping the Russians from pouring through the Fulda Gap for half of that season. When I got back, the South Siders had found new life in a bunch of guys who got famous elsewhere. Earl Togeson, Larry Doby, etc. I found it all very hard to believe, being a North Sider. However, Larry Sherry restored order in the World Series restored order, coming in for the Dodgers in the late innings with a big grin on his face to squelch White Sox comebacks.
Delete1959! Just graduated from high school. Very Cold War period as Tom guarding the Fulda Gap shows...if I recall accurately Daley got raked over the coals for sounding the air raid sirens (that's the berserk part).
DeleteThe word berserk came into English in the early 19th century, as a noun used to describe an ancient Norse warrior who fought with uncontrolled ferocity (also known as a berserker). The English word derives from the Old Norse berserkr (noun), itself probably from combining bjorn (bear) and serkr (coat).
DeleteApparently also a Japanese anime:
Berserk (Japanese: ベルセルク, Hepburn: Beruseruku) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kentaro Miura. Set in a medieval Europe-inspired dark fantasy world, the story centers on the characters of Guts, a lone mercenary, and Griffith, the leader of a mercenary band called the "Band of the Hawk".
Obviously a phenomenon of the West! Japanese do not go berserk...but wait, what about kamikaze? Cool, calculated, rational?
The Albright book makes it clear that authoritarian dictators come from both the right and the left and that the terms to describe, including fascist, can be ambiguous. Neither author is making a direct comparison between trump and hitler. But both do point out that trump uses the same kinds of rhetoric, and the same crowd manipulating tools as previous authoritarian ps who morphed into being dictators. Such as creating distrust of the news media, of institutions, etc. repeated lies to the point where too many don’t recognize lies because they are repeated over and over by the corrupt leader and by his minions. The breaking down of previous standards of truth in government so that the constant assaults become ordinary. Previous minimal norms of behavior, political behavior, are also tossed aside and people accept it. The constant use of insults and demeaning rhetoric towards opponents continues to increase divisions and partisanship. There is a reason schools are reporting increasing levels of bullying that mimics the language of trump.
ReplyDeleteToo hard to continue to discuss on the iPad and not at home so that I can refer to the books. Trump may actually be a combination of authoritarians on both left and right, but even if not a pure fascist, he,s a danger to our country. Still recommend that people read both Snyder and Albright for themselves and worry less about the most appropriate label.
I'm reading the Albright now. Early in, but she makes the interesting point that fascism is a method to gain power rather than an ideology--all that meshes with the actions you mention.
DeleteThat makes a certain amount of sense to me.
I can believe that it's about power rather than any type of deeply held beliefs. Unless it's belief that oneself should be the strongest honcho of all (looking in the mirror like the wicked queen in Snow White)
DeleteNB. Timothy Snyder does not focus on fascism only as the tyranny we should fear...a quote from the back of the jacket:
Delete"The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience."
Thank you Margaret for the quote. I was frustrated because I don’t have my book with me while traveling. I wanted to find an appropriate quote to explain that the concern is not limited to a rerun of hitler.
DeleteAnother way of thinking about this demonstrated on the front page of today's (2/16) NY Times: Paranoia.
DeleteThe article contains rich descriptions of Trump, the Trump White House, and Trump enablers. (Written by Trump whisperers: Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman.)
The kicker: "Presidential paranoia is not a new phenomenon but Mr. Trump, burned by impeachment, seems to have elevated it to a governing philosophy of his White House."
Also mentions an old favorite, Richard Hofstader, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/us/politics/trump-distrust-paranoia.html
Meanwhile, other countries are also enduring assaults on their democracies. This article, from Crux, appeared on the Missionary Benedictine Sisters site. The motherhouse for this order is in Norfolk, NE. They have hosted the formation program for the Diaconate in the archdiocese for many years, so we are well acquainted with them. They have missions all over the world.
ReplyDeleteWhat the Crux article describes in India is different, and way worse, than what we are experiencing in this country. But it seems as if this temptation to extremism is like a virus making the rounds all over the world (who needs corona virus!). And it's hard to pinpoint why. We haven't experienced a Great Depression, or a World War. Yet it is the season of our discontent. At some point this would be a good topic for a post.