While I've read Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) posts, I just realized that it's a continuous blog. So I started reading it and found this gem.
In this he realized the fact that anti-Trump protests ended despite people claimed that he is the new Hitler. So he concluded that two options are possible:
The truth is #1. The liberals still think Trump is Hitler, they just don't want to miss class or work than walk around with signs which does nothing. So they fall back to slacktivism. What's my evidence that people can just go on with their lives when they truly believe that they are living in 1930 Germany? Simple: people in 1930 Germany just went on with their lives. While they mostly rejected Hitler's extremism, they just didn't care enough to do something about it. Socials.
Note: I'm obviously not claiming that Trump is Hitler. I supported him when his polls were the lowest. The post is about those who didn't.
In this he realized the fact that anti-Trump protests ended despite people claimed that he is the new Hitler. So he concluded that two options are possible:
- Protesters decided that accepting Hitler as their leader was better than missing classes or skipping work.
- Protesters have now seen enough counter-evidence to diminish their hallucination of living in 1930s Germany.
The truth is #1. The liberals still think Trump is Hitler, they just don't want to miss class or work than walk around with signs which does nothing. So they fall back to slacktivism. What's my evidence that people can just go on with their lives when they truly believe that they are living in 1930 Germany? Simple: people in 1930 Germany just went on with their lives. While they mostly rejected Hitler's extremism, they just didn't care enough to do something about it. Socials.
Note: I'm obviously not claiming that Trump is Hitler. I supported him when his polls were the lowest. The post is about those who didn't.
23 comments:
First link is broken.
I don't really get the hole comparison between Hitler and Trump. As far as I'm aware, Hitler didn't win votes by advertising the systematic eradication of Jews. He won votes by advertising, and delivering on, giving people jobs. Of course he did on debt, and the stuff he produced was mostly only useful for wars. But politicians to this day advertise more government spending and less taxes at the same time and people still buy into it.
In any case, it's always fun watching people, who claim to be democratic, protest as soon as their candidate didn't win.
"While they mostly rejected Hitler's extremism, they just didn't care enough to do something about it. Socials."
What were the consequences of standing up to Hitlers extremism?
What are your views of people who stop going to work in order to go and protest for months, years if needed? Or who drop out of school to fight against something they view as extreme?
@Hanura: actually he did. His plans were publicized in Mein Kampf and were pretty clear on this.
@Anon: they could just leave the country. Like many Americans promised to leave, but none delivered.
Your post is filled with logical fallacies. The first is the Fallacy of False Generalization. Not everyone who was protesting Trump's election win thought he was the second coming of Hitler. Some did, some were engaging in hyperbole, yet most didn't. To paint them all with that brush is poor logic and lazy thinking.
The second major logical fallacy you commit is the Fallacy of False Choice. You only offer up only two choices. In reality, there are many more potential options. For example, maybe people recognize that the protests were not effective (especially from a cost analysis) and decided that there were more effective ways of fighting against him such as working within the system to stop him or to highlight all of his nasty actions and keep reminding everyone else of them.
Actually, he said to be "literally" Hitler. Literally is not as scary.
Still, I voted for Trump because the SJW scourge hates him so much.
Dear Gevlon, as usual, an interesting, different perspective.
Only one thing bothers me though: Hitler was never quiet about eradicating Jews. He wrote about it in full length in his book, "Mein Kampf" and he publicly spew his hatred for Jews in his speeches, even before 1933.
You luckily live in an era where you can pack your things and settle anywhere in the EU without a fuss. Thanks to the EU and the "Schengen Agreement".
Unfortunately, this was very different in Germany in the 1930's. Leaving Germany was as easy as leaving Hungary before 1990.
Now, Germans who opposed the Nazi party were often socialists, communists and moderate conservatives. Guess who was on the "proscription lists" of the SA and SS? Right, members of those parties. People could not simply leave, they had to plan clandestinely and cross the border on unguarded places.
People did not "not bother", their lives basically were either uninfluenced by the Nazi rule or they were tracked, arrested and put in concentration camps. Do not forget that these camps were not only built for Jews, but for "undesirable minorities" like gipsies and homosexuals and for the political ennemies, like socialists and communists.
If leaving Germany had been as simple as you haveclaimed it to be, then why so few Jews managed to get away in time? Why were so many socialists kept and tortured in these camps?
to make it clear: I do no have anything against Trump and I am glad that Hillary did not win. I will sit back and watch his policy unfold and how it may or may not reshape our world.
I find it extremely unsettling that the western media is so biased in favor of Clinton, while forgetting all of her shortcomings and questionable if not illegal actions and decisions.
Also, I harshly criticise the way the EU is acting towards Russia. The whole world would be better off, accepting Russia as a political partner and not as the arch-ennemy. It is totally unacceptable that the Baltic states behave as if the were able to challenge Russia's domination in that region. They are mere lapdogs of the American state departmentin order to keep reasons for stationing troops at the Russiand border. I believe it is high time that Trump and Putin met and come to an arrangement to defuse the situation in regard of Syria and the Ukraine...
@Jim L: those who didn't see him as Hitler did not protest, merely voted for Clinton. If you accept someone as a valid - even not preferred - candidate, you accept that people voted for him and he is your president. Anyone protesting is declaring that he is NOT an acceptable candidate which means Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot...
@99smite: back in the 30-es immigration to the US from Europe was huge and easy.
Sophia Scholl distributed leaflets complaining about the Nazis. She was guillotined for her troubles. There was an incentive to not protest. However the only similarity between Trump and Hitler at this point is they are both grubby opportunists taking advantage of dysfunctional countries.
The liberal protests of Trump of the mirror of the tea party of Obama. Remember Obama was the next Hitler, he was going to take all the guns, put dissidents in FEMA camps, and use the healthcare reform as a cover for "death panels". Though the fact is that most protestors of anything are a tiny minority, the majority of socials not only did not protest, but didn't even use their vote.
Or alternatively, we're just waiting for him to mess up enough to be impeached. Sometime in early December he made a comment on just then starting to realize how big the job he'd spent a year and a half campaigning for is once he started to be read into everything.
At that moment I realized something. He applied and got accepted to the biggest job in the world, doesn't know half of what's involved, and is just an accident waiting to happen. Sometimes it's just easier to let a person you know is going to fail, fail. Trump's well on his way to running smack dab into some pretty large ethics problems with the office. I'll just sit back, let it happen, and then worry about the fallout once there's enough physical proof of him being unfit for the office.
A lot of his ethics issues were let slide by the public because in our minds private sector and public sector are held to two different standards. Once he's in the public sector and does the same crap... it'll be easier to oust him.
"Literally is not as scary”, said Doctor Jeep.
Only for some meaning of "literal" other than its literal meaning.
The big demonstrations aren't happening any more because they were astroturf rallies, not grassroot rallies. These protesters were paid, bussed in and handed their signs to wave. The media did a fairly good job of magnifying the size of the protests while focusing in on the few locals, but if you live in the area where one of these protests happened, it's obvious. Either the paymaster(s) decided they were wasting their money, or their objective was achieved.
How do you know this? Did you talk to everyone who was protesting or are you merely making it up and asserting it?
For the record, I know lots of people who protested. They don't think Trump is the second coming of Hitler. However they do think he is a unqualified, undisciplined, corrupt individual who is unfit for the office of the presidency.
You are just offering up another Fallacy of False Choice to defend you false generalization.
This is getting boring. If you compare any two persons, you will find lot of things where they are alike and on same time lot of things where they are different. It wont prove anything even if those persons are very comparable or very different. I like Randall Munroe way of looking things, what if your opponent is right, what then? What will happen, what results it will give and how you can use that for your own advantage?
"They don't think Trump is the second coming of Hitler."
So you claim they are protesting against democracy then? Because the other side thought Obama was unqualified, undisciplined, corrupt and unfit for office as well. But democracy decided that he wasn't, and so he got elected president.
And that's no fallacy of false choice, you either support democracy with all it's flaws, or you don't. If you only like democracy when your side wins, you don’t really like democracy.
"So you claim they are protesting against democracy then? Because the other side thought Obama was unqualified, undisciplined, corrupt and unfit for office as well. But democracy decided that he wasn't, and so he got elected president.
And that's no fallacy of false choice, you either support democracy with all it's flaws, or you don't. If you only like democracy when your side wins, you don’t really like democracy."
you still get to protest.
You can protest when your government who you voted in, looks to be making decisions that will negatively impact your nation.
Or are you saying democracy = shut up apart from at the ballot box every 4 years?
Gob's sorry brother you are 100% wrong (at least for jews and gypsies)The US was very concerned about the "jewish" problem with very hard caps on "jewish" immigration and in general but specifically targeting jews.
"So you claim they are protesting against democracy then?"
Please find where I said anything like that. I didn't. You dishonestly made that up and pretended that was my claim.
And yes, it was a fallacy of false choice. Gevlon acted like there were only two options when there were other choices.
As for your crack about supporting democracy or not, you are failing to see that a person can accept the results of the election but protest the actions of the winner. It should also be noted that the U.S. is not really a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. There is a difference. If the U.S. was a democracy, Trump would have lost the election.
When replying, please be more honest and argue with words I have actually said. Don't make up stuff and pretend I said it.
Talk to every protester, Jim L? Now there's a straw man.
No, all you have to do is have eyes to see with and a brain to think with. When I see bus after bus pull up, folks file out, pick up signs (professionally made) and head over to the demonstration, it's easy to figure out what's going on. When I count over 20 charter busses parked in the area, it's obvious to any but a moron or Hillary supporter (yes, I'm being redundant there). Reports of Craigslist offerings of temporary employment for the purpose of protesting the election are just icing on the cake.
"you still get to protest."
Sure you do, but please note that we are talking specifically about anti-Trump protests here, most of them happening before he has even entered office. It's perfectly fine to protest against new policies he makes up further down the line, or whatever else you feel the need to protest against.
However, if you protest against the very choice that the other side has made just because you don't like this choice, then I can only conclude that you do not support democracy.
"Please find where I said anything like that. I didn't. You dishonestly made that up and pretended that was my claim."
Of course you didn't say so explicitly. But it's not dishonestly made up, it's the invariable consequence of what you did say.
The fundamental premise of democracy is, that once an issue has been voted upon, the decision must be respected by everyone. You don't have to like the decision, and neither do you have to respect decisions that followed that weren't voted upon. But if you don't accept the very result of an election, then democracy simply cannot work.
There is only one exception to this rule: if accepting the decision would somehow lead to the end of democracy, aka Hitler/Stalin/whatever type of regimes.
Now you do claim, explicitly, that (most) protesters don't think that Trump is the next Hitler. So the exception clearly cannot apply. However, they still are attending anti-Trump protests, disrespecting the decision that the other side made.
Which I can only conclude from that they don't support democracy after all.
Mass protests require organisation and logistics. And no, this doesn't mean George Soros bussing in poor black people to pick up slick, factory-made signs they don't bother to read (a favourite right-wing fantasy) but it does mean having communications, tactics vis a vis law enforcement, parameters, clear goals and an endgame.
The early spontaneous protests were a mistake, precisely because they were spontaneous and naturally petered out, giving people like Adams ammunition to say that Trump isn't seen as so bad after all. Ordinary people can be moved to perform incredible deeds of self-sacrifice, but they need to be part of a discernible movement and to be shown some hope of achieving results. Stopping particular policies is indeed better - and in general, unlike in 1968, there are more sophisticated methods of political action than turning out in the street.
For what it's worth, like Jim, I have a number of American friends, most fairly highly educated who could not be paid for their time, who were aghast at Trump's ascendance, went off to protest (which I see as self-indulgent catharsis more than anything useful) and are now doing what they can to organise against him. Opposition to him is not synthetic. It is real.
The protests that I read about were centered around swaying the Electoral College to 'vote their conscience', which is why they ended before he has taken office.
I personally believe that civil disobedience is PART OF the AMERICAN democratic process. No other country expects dissenting views to be as vocal as the empowered and impassioned American citizen voicing their opinion.
Americans have two types of protests, both of which are valid and both have been successful over its existence, peaceful and violent. Be glad that since the 80s, they have been peaceful ... we cannot afford another 60s in such a significantly fractured political/economic/social/ethnic/gender vocal mainstream divide we are currently in (and I am not talking about the media, I am talking about real people).
I'd rather say that it is realizing that marching on streets does not stop a Hitler.
Going to classes and becoming well educated does.
Or at least, is better in the long run.
As is going to work and working for something better than Hitler.
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