Sound Familiar?

As long as we are on the subject, does this remind you of anyone?

He has no record of public service, but wants to gain the most powerful position in the country. He gains in popularity by tapping into the anger and resentment of an ethnic population that feels recently dispossessed of its cultural birthrights. He calls for the exclusion and prosecution of ethnic minorities within his country. His rhetoric emphasizes a patriotism of collective past greatness, and the need to return to that greatness. He has no particular policy proposals that make any sense, just grandiose and impractical declarations. He says that the system needs an outsider to tear it down and star again. The politicians around him are so embarrassed by his stridency and the notoriety it brings that they will not stand up to him and call him out for his practices.

      

Now, I know I will raise the ire of a whole lot of people by making this comparison, but it's time to shake off the political correctness Trump and his followers so detest and call things as  they are.

So far, only because Trump has gained no power, he has done no serious damage. He probably would not and could not commit the atrocities executed by Hitler.

But Trump is following the playbook of the worst and most dangerous kind of demagogue. Taking him lightly is foolish. He needs to be put in his place by the Republican Party so we do not slip closer to the harm he could bring.

Have any doubts? I recommend to you Hannah Arendt, from Origins of Totalitarianism:

It has frequently been pointed out that totalitarian movements use and abuse democratic freedoms in order to abolish them. This is not just devilish cleverness on the part of the leaders or childish stupidity on the part of the masses. Democratic freedoms may be based on the equality of all citizens before the law; yet they acquire their meaning and function organically only where the citizens belong to and are respected by groups or form a social and political hierarchy…
            Indifference to public affairs and, neutrality on political issues, are themselves not sufficient cause for the rise of totalitarian movements. The competitive and acquisitive society of the bourgeoisie had produced apathy and even hostility toward public life not only, and not even primarily, in the social strata that were exploited and excluded from active participation in the rule of the country, but first of all in its own class…Both the early apathy and the later demand for monopolistic dictatorial direction of the nation of the nation’s foreign affairs had their roots in a way and philosophy of life so insistently and exclusively centered on the individual’s success or failure in ruthless competition that a citizen’s duties and responsibilities could be felt to be a needless drain on his limited time and energy…

Schilling Owes No Apology

ESPN baseball commentator Curt Schilling was suspended yesterday for a tweet in which he compared ISIS to Adolf Hitler. That's a silly, oversensitive thing to do.

ESPN's publicity antennae went off because Muslim and Jewish groups found the tweet objectionable, and ESPN wants nothing to do with anything that might alienate two large, advertising-consuming groups like those. But what can it mean that the tweet was "completely unacceptable"?

ISIS has developed an officially sponsored, systematic approach to raping little girls. It has attempted to wipe from the face of the earth all evidence of life before its brand of cruel, ignorant, nasty Islam. It is led by psychopath.

Comparisons across time and culture are always fraught, and it serves no purpose to engage in talk about "who is the biggest victim." Schilling's tweet therefore did no serious good. Then again, it was a tweet, for goodness sake.

People who cannot handle the comparison need to get over themselves. Jews do not have a monopoly on suffering, and not every remark about the Holocaust needs to be clearer through B'nai Brith. Schilling did not condemn Islam, he condemned a bunch of murderous thugs who claim Islam as justification. Those who do not like it can say so, but ESPN once again took the path of craven sycophancy.

Shame

Why Education in History is So Important

What students learn matters.

For some people, they ought to learn certain ideas: that the United States is "exceptional," that its leaders are generally motivated by a desire to liberate the world, that its economic system of free enterprise promotes innovation and freedom, and the like. These people, many of whom protested a revision of the College Board Advanced Placement Exam in US History, understand that students' experiences in school help frame their view of the world, and they want kids to share their particular view.

To an extent, that's not only right, it's unavoidable. I want my students to believe that dictatorship causes suffering (most of the time), that freedom of expression is as productive as it is morally preferable (most of the time), that the rule of law is essential to political effectiveness.

The reaction to the AP curriculum therefore was not totally unreasonable, but it was badly skewed. There is nothing wrong, for example, with promoting the idea that Americans in the south were proud of slavery. They were. They defended the institution with the very last of their blood and treasure, and there was very limited dissent from this view of things. These facts are unfortunate and maybe even embarrassing, but they are true, and people need to understand them if they are to know US history. (They also probably need to know those facts to understand the defense of the Confederate flag and the Black Lives Matter movement.)

That the College Board could revise the test in the face of political pressure reveals the bureaucratic nature of that organization, but it also highlights the urgency of teaching kids to think for themselves, and to ask questions about the facts.

I would rather that they learn to ask: was the United States really exceptional? How? Was it exceptional in the way many leaders said it was? Is that good? Has the United States, by and large, promoted freedom in the world? How? Why? Is our economic system truly based on the market? Do we want it to be? Why?

Questions are much better than answers.