This seems right to me, Pamela, It also seems appropriate to learn the history of Weimar better, and I don’t know very much about it.
A key point seems to be that the Germans didn’t suddenly wake up in the 1930s and decide to adopt a totalitarian state and exterminate millions of people, driving millions more into exile, and decimating their society. That particular insanity grew out of a more severe depression than the American one of the same decade, and the German depression, if I understand, was driven by a combination of economic and political incompetence and corruption which instigated several years of disastrous hyperinflation, as well as political and social turmoil, with some of the early specific moves made around 1919. (Of course, given the situation at the time, I expect some of those choices in turn seemed inexorably driven by outcomes of the first World War, but that is even further into the depth of my ignorance.) Keeping the scope of this paragraph with Weimar, there were two decades of bad-to-worse, and I imagine a great many people could not see why there were not choices for them, except to participate in the descent because they didn’t see ways to escape from it or to change it. These things have history and they have lock-in effects that we wrongly term “inertia". Behavior, institutions, and law interlock; they change jointly, and it can be hard to fix one part when it is held in place by the others that are broken. If we elect people who would be at home in the governments of the Philippines or Zimbabwe, and we accept the undermining of law and institutions for the sake of the same extractive aims at work in any number of places, I don’t see why people think they will somehow be magically protected from having the same outcome; such a belief seems to me intellectually out-to-lunch. Eric > On Dec 1, 2016, at 5:14 PM, Pamela McCorduck <pam...@well.com> wrote: > > I found the article just silly. Yes, the comparison between Thinking Fast and > Thinking Slow is apt. Maybe we should call the Trumpists “trigger finger > voters” and the Clinton voters, “think before you pull the trigger” voters. > > Also apt, to this student (and survivor) of WW II are the parallels between > what Trump has said, and what the rising Hitler said, and how their followers > behaved as a consequence. I took particular issue with “the ripping of the > social fabric by immigration”—especially since my family and I, and my > husband and his family, were immigrants. > > A visit to the Jerusalem show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art tells you how > Jerusalem at its height (1100-1500) was one of the great cities of the world, > because it was deeply and widely multicultural (yes, the three major > religions, but dozens of sects in each of them). Shut down the immigrants and > the merchants go away. Drive the merchants away and the place begins to > decline. > > Am I elite? You bet. I worked my ass off in college—I put myself through a > first-rate university, worked in a low-paying clerical job for a few more > years (because that was the only job path open to women, no matter how well > educated they were), then went to an Ivy graduate school. I earned my elite > status, and I was very lucky in the bargain. > > I vote for school bonds that no children of mine will ever need, because I > think it’s for the greater good. I pay extra taxes to support Medicare, and I > do it willingly, though I would much rather see not a reform of Medicare, but > a reform of the entire medical system. > > But hey, we have a real-time experiment coming up. Let’s just see how much > better the country is under a Trump executive and a Republican Congress. > > > > >> On Dec 1, 2016, at 12:12 PM, Eric Charles <eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> Glen, >> The style matters. Oddly quite a bit. "Liberal elitism" is snobbish, aloof, >> and patronizing. Note, it is not the way in which they are "elite", but the >> "elitism" that rankles the most. Trump's financial-elite >> bull-in-a-china-shop schtick looks and feels very different, and there are >> many people who would much rather deal with it. Bill Clinton was a friggin' >> Rhodes scholar, but connected with everyday Americans, and wasn't, until he >> sought to get so aggressively dynastic, at risk of the "liberal elite" >> label. I've not heard it leveled at Carter either. On the other hand, Gore >> and Kerry reeked of it, and that was part of their problem. >> >> As the article says towards the end: >> " “High information” people ignore evidence if it conflicts with their >> preferred narrative all the time. And while it may be naïve for voters to >> believe the promises of Trump and the Brexit campaigners — it has also been >> profoundly naïve for the cosmopolitan classes to believe that years of >> forced internationalism and forced political correctness were never going to >> end with a large scale backlash." >> >> >> >> >> ----------- >> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. >> Supervisory Survey Statistician >> U.S. Marine Corps >> >> On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 1:22 PM, ┣glen┫ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> On 12/01/2016 10:11 AM, cody dooderson wrote: >> > Sorry, but I found the first article very disturbing. It seems like an >> > opinion piece that might have come out during the rise of the Nazi party. >> > It blames the 'parasitic educated' class, praises the virtues of the >> > military service, and argues in favor racial segregation. >> > My very shallow reading on the rise of the Nazi party led me to believe >> > that they had a very similar platform. >> >> +1 >> >> On a slight tangent: I'm still confused about why so many feel compelled to >> prefix "elite" with "liberal". If this were really about anti-elitism, we'd >> see just as much silly spewage toward buffoons like Trump (who just knows >> better -- trust him -- he's the only one who can make america great again). >> Despite my confusion, I'm inclined to believe it's because only really lazy >> people yap incoherently about "elitism." The rest of us work our butts off >> to specialize ... elite machinists, elite cowboys, elite bow hunters, elite >> beer drinkers ... I am an elite. But I'm not a liberal. So, the bias(es) >> inherent in articles like this are blatantly obvious. >> >> >> > On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Owen Densmore <o...@backspaces.net >> > <mailto:o...@backspaces.net>> wrote: >> > >> > I love it. The Elites are getting hammered. Snobocracy is now so >> > visible that it can be attacked for what it really is. >> > >> > >> > http://quillette.com/2016/11/30/stop-calling-people-low-information-voters/ >> > >> > <http://quillette.com/2016/11/30/stop-calling-people-low-information-voters/> >> > >> > This was also referred to by this: >> > >> > http://quillette.com/2016/11/14/cut-out-the-literally-hitler-hysteria/ >> > <http://quillette.com/2016/11/14/cut-out-the-literally-hitler-hysteria/> >> > >> > I love a good rant! Liberal Elites lost the election. Oh, wait, maybe >> > we *are* LEs? >> >> >> -- >> ␦glen? >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
