The
more things change the more they remain the same, so why the worry?
JAMES RAYMOND FISHER, JR., Ph.D.
© January 20, 2017
NOTE:
Like most other concerned people, Donald J. Trump’s soaring victory
to the Presidency of the United States has disrupted the norms with which we
have become familiar, not only in the United States, but abroad as well.
Many have written of their concerns, often harkening back to the
not too distant past when Adolf Hitler, the Austrian corporal in the German
army in WWI, found his way to become duly elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933,
assuming dictatorial power with wide German approval, then launching his
scorching earth policy and madness of WWII, only to suffer ignominious defeat twelve
years later (1945), committing suicide in his Berlin bunker as Russian tanks
were roaring into the city.
As true as the Trump rise appears to resonate with this history,
America has its own indigenous story that seems to parallel and track the Trump
disruption. It is the inconceivable rise
of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1829.
Both views are prominent in this exchange.
A READER WRITES:
Good evening, Jim.
Forgetting about
tomorrow for a few paragraphs, the last few readers' letters and your replies
make excellent reading. Perhaps central is that phenomenon called "human
nature."
It reminds us that
ultimately realism puts the bounds on idealism. It behooves us idealists to
keep on searching for means by which we might make idealism put the bounds on
realism.
Inculcating the Golden
Rule is a rudimentary attempt. My expansion of that rule by walking in my fellow
man's moccasins would be an improvement, but still ... There remains that human
nature, notably the effect of approbation of any individual's upbringing and
environment. Your notes on the practical benefit of the two-party system forces
me, for one to reflect on this.
Now for Trump. By now we
well understand what he has been doing:
First: effectively
appealing to those feeling ignored by both the political parties of "the
right" and the "quasi center/left"
Secondly, creating a
strong, ultra-right power house and putting a socialist, nationalist label on
it.
Thirdly, commingling
fact and fiction, in the process undermining the press (a good chunk of which
has done a good job of undermining itself by maximizing profit at the expense
of exemplary journalism). I well know that this line is overly simplistic.
What we do have are the
components of national-socialism as generated by Hitler and Goebbels.
Current mantra is: He
has been elected; give him a chance. Hitler got that chance and did for most
Germans many a good thing, not the least of which was a renewed respect for
their country and themselves (and not seeing what they did not wish to see).
I have observed
immigrant Canadians from Germany collectively maintaining the culture of their
upbringing under the Nazi regime including, the reverence. Upbringing is
indelible, one aspect of human nature. Education can do much to overcome this...
As a note aside: I
recently read about improvements in the Dutch penal system with its strong
efforts on rehabilitation and decent treatment of the inmates. As a consequence
there was a great reduction in repeat offenders and s further consequence a
diminishing prison population and the making available of jail space to
prisoners from other countries. Yes, human nature is quite malleable and, while
recognizing its existence, it should not be used blindly as an excuse for
favoring a caste system of sorts.
By tweeting as one of
the boys for that chunk of society blithely overlooked by mainstream (read
"career") politicians, Trump exerts a powerful force on them to go
along with his way of thinking and doing.
Hitler gained control by
having passed an enabling act by which he, the party's leader became the
nation's leader. Then, obsessed with racial superiority over Slavs and Jews, he
moved to criminal excesses on the international scale. When he eventually
realized his game was up, he (as far as we know) committed suicide and left
instructions with his Industry Minister Albert Speer to scorch Germany (Germans
just did not deserve him, he felt). Speer, up to then always his obedient
servant, decided to disobey this final order. That saved him from the noose
following the Nuremberg trials and got him 20 years in Spandau prison instead.
Call me paranoid if you
wish, but Trump does not need a Speer. He might avail himself of a stronger
weapon.
And so, let's hope I am
dead-wrong.
Henry
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Henry,
I cannot fault your
analysis; not any part of it, but I can fault your projections, which are
somewhat pessimistic conclusions, while to my surprise, mine are rather optimistic. Yet, to harbor some trepidations as the Donald
assumes the Presidency of the United States are understandable.
Sinclair Lewis wrote “It Can’t Happen Here!” (1935) three
years after Hitler came to power, a novel I read as a boy, and strangely, could
not find anyone to discuss it with, including my parents. My da said it was pure nonsense. He didn’t change his mind when I told him that
Lewis had won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1930).
It was not great
literature but it has stayed with me all these years knowing it could happen
here. Should you read the novel, the
Donald is likely, unfortunately, to come to mind. To
wit:
“It Can’t Happen Here” is a semi-satirical political novel published during the rise of fascism in Europe. The novel describes the rise of Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a politician who defeats favored Franklin Delano Roosevelt for President of the United States, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and “traditional American values.” After his election, Windrip takes complete control of government and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force in the manner of Adolf Hitler’s SS troops.
The novel's subplot centers on journalist Doremus Jessup's opposition to the new regime and his subsequent struggle against it as part of a liberal rebellion. Reviewers at the time emphasized the connection with Louisiana politician Huey Long (1893 – 1935) who was preparing to run for president (like George Wallace did years later) in 1936 when he was assassinated in 1935 prior to the novel’s publication.
I have a complete library on Adolf Hitler with more than two score of books on all aspects of his life, books that I have read assiduously, and the same goes for two biographies on Albert Speer, as well as his autobiography. Speer was as slippery a character as Hitler was demonic, and as you have pointed out, avoided being hanged at Nuremberg for his distracting finesse.
The Donald is someone I understand because my life (like his) has
been all about struggle, not vengeance, but struggle to do something not only
to be someone; to generate something not simply imitate the norm; to be as
comfortable with failure as success and therefore not surprised by either; to
distant myself from the rabble while still being in the center of it; to not
worry about confounding others because it is not my job as others are amply motivated
to do that on their own; to learn that money, power, ambition or even success
are not my drive, while they may be the Donald’s, but love, and being able to cherish
someone completely, and to enjoy the luxury and freedom that provides to dream
and to express those dreams in words and ideas, which may or may not connect
with others as that connection is not needed to justify writing every day
knowing that most people are too busy to pause and wonder about what I find so
electrifying.
Many people thoroughly
disappointed with Trump’s presidential victory have written to me about his
many failures, his many lawsuits, his many marriages, his fraudulent
university, and so on.
What they don’t mention,
because it doesn’t fit the narrative, is that the Donald has metaphorically made
a silk purse out of a sow’s ear repeatedly over his long career. He understands what others cannot
comprehend.
That is why he spent $1
to ever $10 Hillary Clinton did on the campaign; that is why throngs came to
his rallies when he said nothing new; that is why he had the most demanding campaign
I can recall in my lifetime; and that is why he went many times to New
Hampshire for its one electoral vote.
Were the disappointed to study his imaginative arrival into
politics it might augur well for them in the future, but we seldom learn from
those we hate and despise, which of course is to our loss.
Struggle defines the
Donald. It is the boilerplate of his
leadership. As you have pointed out, I
think correctly, he is neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but a pragmatic realist
in the same sense as David Hume’s essay on Human
Nature states that reason is not the key, as reason should be the slave of human
passions fueled by “self-interest,” not benevolence motivated action. To do
good you do good; you don’t talk about doing good.
The Donald’s genius was
that he was a politician without acting like a politician; that he connected
with people by not talking at or down to them but with them. He didn’t need a Goebbels at his side; he was
his own propagandist who understood the “Temper of the Time,” which was the
title of one of Eric Hoffer’s books, a billionaire who connected with the frustrations
of the underclass in America.
Americans have always marveled
at being able to invent things but seem to be handicapped and to have little capacity
to understand human nature other than with rhetoric or promises never kept.
Will the Donald be
different? We don’t know, but we have
been here before, not as Nazi Germany, but as a fledgling nation with a roughshod
woodsman from the back country with a no nonsense approach to life. I am speaking of the Irish American, Andrew Jackson.
THE IMPROBABLE “AGE OF JACKSON”
Andrew Jackson was born
in 1767 and was brought up by his widow mother who died in 1781 when he was
fourteen. With little schooling, he and his
brother joined the army of the American Revolution.
Andrew proved not only a
brave soldiers but a stubborn one. He
and his brother were captured and a British Captain told him to polish his
boots; he refused and was beaten. His
brother refused as well but had his skull crushed by the stock of a rifle. He was never right after that.
Andrew got his revenge
when they escaped by killing the commanding officer of a British brigade on a
horse cutting the officer down from his sniper’s perch in a tree. This action was not considered proper
military etiquette, but that etiquette had no meaning to Jackson. This would be a pattern throughout his life. He couldn’t be intimidated, always moving in
the direction of the danger or challenge.
His career in the
military flourished as a general in the Tennessee Volunteers where he fought in
the “War of 1812” and French and Indian
War, and became a national hero in the “Battle
of New Orleans in 1815” where he decimated the British flotilla of hundreds
of ships and more than 8,000 British regulars.
General Jackson had a
patchwork of 4,500 men made up of army regulars, frontier militiamen, free
blacks, New Orleans aristocrats and Choctaw tribesman. In only a period of 30 minutes, the battle
was over with the British losing 2,000 men among them 3 generals and 7 colonels,
while Jackson lost less than 100 men.
A peace treaty was being
signed in Ghent, Belgium so the victory was anticlimactic, ending Great Britain’s
ambition to reclaim the American colonies.
Jackson was known as “Old Hickory” while being only 48.
He was recognized as a
man of the hinterland, not of the established East. With no formal education, he won election to
the House of Representatives and subsequently to the United States Senate. He was unpopular with the Founding Fathers,
especially Thomas Jefferson, who found him primitive and uncouth and not worthy to be a member of the august body of the U.S. Senate. Yet, he became the seventh president of the
United States.
He ran for the
presidency in 1824 against John Quincy Adams and won the popular vote but didn’t
have enough electoral votes but neither did Adams. The House of Representatives chose Adams over
him. He ran again in 1828 and won in a
landslide, and won again in 1832. As
president he was confronted by an assassin whose gun jammed with Jackson
hitting him several times with his walking stick.
He took on the Second Bank
of the United States, which had a powerful lobby that thought it could back him
into a corner forcing him to back down or lose a second term. He didn’t back down, destroyed the Second
Bank, transferred its funds to the US Treasury and won reelection.
He was always emphatic
in his actions. The policy of
transporting Indian tribes from the South to the North West had commenced in much
earlier administrations, but Jackson took hold of the policy vigorously enforcing
the relocation, a removal program that started in 1813 and continued 18 years
after he left the presidency (1855) in 1837 (see Gloria Jahoda’s “The Trail of
Tears”), yet only he is associated with this terrible injustice.
He was hated by the
powerful and the connected and the well-heeled, and that included three
powerful senators, all of whom wanted to be president: Henry Clay, Daniel
Webster and John Calhoun (who had been Jackson’s vice president but resigned to
fulfill a senate seat opened in South Carolina).
Jackson’s legacy
commenced with Martin Van Buren, his vice president, succeeding him in 1837 to
18941, then William Henry Harrison, again of Jackson’s party, was elected in 1841
and died a month later, John Tyler was president from 1841 – 1845, James Polk
from 1945 – 1949, which indicates that Jackson’s party held the presidency for
a score of years (1829 – 1949), prompting historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
to call it “The Age of Jackson.” Could that happen to the Donald?
Certainly no one thought
it would ever happen to the poorly educated Andrew Jackson, but it did.
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