If Donald Trump or Ted Cruz are elected president, we're all going to die. So suggests liberal radio host Thom Hartmann in a premise notably unhinged even for a liberal radio host. Don't claim you were never warned.
Hartmann, among the most influential voices on the left through his books, radio show and YouTube channel, demonstrated little reluctance in violating Godwin's Law -- he who invokes the Nazis first in an argument, loses -- during his radio show Dec. 14.
In the manner of a frat-house sociology major after too many bong hits, Hartmann actually compares Trump and Cruz and what they want for America to two of the most murderous regimes in history --
The Germans and the Japanese, prior to World War II, were devastated in large part by World War I. I mean, the Japanese were, well, they were devastated too. I mean, they had basically .. an export-driven economy and World War I had wiped out that. And of course Germany was devastated, you know, it was a war zone as a result of World War I. And two basically cults -- death cults -- you could call it a religion, it's really not quite the right word, but two cults rose in Germany and Japan as the result of, you know, the circumstances of the time, of the Great Depression, which was happening worldwide, and you know, the loss of those two countries.
Germany was humiliated by World War I, the Treaty of Versailles which John Maynard Keynes said if we were to sign it and Roosevelt did ....
Presumably Hartmann means Woodrow Wilson and not Franklin (or Theodore) Roosevelt --
... would lead to World War II. The Treaty of Versailles was extracting horrible punishments from Germany, requiring them at the same time that they were, you know, trying to rebuild their cities and deal with things like cholera epidemics and the great flu pandemic and whatnot ... they were obligated to pay what in today's dollars would be hundreds of billions of dollars to the Allied powers who defeated them and they just didn't have the money. And so in trying to pay those debts off they devalued their currencies so they could pay them off in cheaper deutsch marks and that led to an inflation, where, you know, it took a wheelbarrel full of cash to buy a loaf of bread.
And out of that, in both Germany and Japan, came these cult leaders, Adolf Hitler and Tojo, or Hirohito, you know, or both really. Tojo was the general, Hirohito was the Japanese emperor. And the essential argument of these cults, the Nazism cult in Germany and the, uh, the Japanese cult, I'm not sure what the name for it was, what the party was at that time in Japan, the essential argument was, existed on a couple of levels, but my point in sharing this with you is that I believe this is exactly what Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are up to, is they are trying to create these kinds of cults in the United States.
And the first part of it was a shared belief that we are a persecuted people, that the rest of the world is out to get us. In the case of Germany it was, you know, look at how we've been wiped out. In the case of Japan, well, it was look at how we've been wiped out. Here in the United States now, we find that the middle class, which used to be about 65 percent of America, is now below 50 percent for the first time since the 1970s. ... Prosperity has vanished.
Now at the level of people falling out of the middle class, a lot of that is happening largely to the white middle class but it's also hitting the black middle class really, really badly. Proportionally it's hitting the black middle class even worse than the white middle class. Just in absolute numbers, the white middle class was much larger.
And so Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and the other Republicans too to an extent but these two are really doing it, are trying to promote this cult of victimhood -- we are the victims of others. Now who are those others? In the case of the Japanese it was the Chinese, let's invade China and the Rape of Nanking came out of that. In the case of the Germans, it was the Jews -- oh it must be the Jews who are doing this to us. And, you know, they went off after the Jews. And in both cases, pretty much the entire nation signed up for the cult and that's why they fought so ferociously in World War II, I mean, to the last man.
A friend of mine was a 15-year-old soldier in Hitler's army, you know, in the last year of the war, I mean, that's what they were doing, they were drafting 15-year-olds. And it took the absolute defeat of those countries to break the hold of those cults. I see a death cult in ISIS in the Middle East and what to do about that is a whole 'nother discussion which the president presumably will be speaking about soon. But I'm also seeing the rise of death cults in the United States in the Trump and Cruz candidacy.
And frankly that scares the hell out of me when I see death cults rising in other countries, death cults rising in our country, that is a world war scenario.
Spoken -- more accurately, bleeted -- like the sheep who can't distinguish from sheepdogs that would protect the flock from the wolves who prey upon it. I wasn't acquainted with the analogy until reading Bill Whittle's stellar 2005 essay,Tribes, where he credited it to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's book The Bulletproof Mind --
If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen: a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath -- a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love of your fellow citizens? Then you are a sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed. ...
The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog that intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work in any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.
Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spraypaint himself white, and go "baa." Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.
Death toll from the Nazi and Japanese regimes in World War II -- more than 10 million people.
Death toll from ISIS -- thousands of victims, and growing by the month.
Death toll from the Trump and Cruz campaigns -- zero. One can't rule out the possibility, however, that Trump or Cruz might acquire nuclear weapons, whereupon property values in San Francisco and other liberal enclaves would surely plummet.
Only way to know for sure if Hartmann means what he says or is being provocative for its own sake -- if and when Trump or Cruz get elected, will Hartmann remain in the United States and thereby risk his life under that fearful GOP junta?
