One of the worst bits to the end of the McCain-Palin campaign was how they started slinging every insult at Obama: calling him Socialist, Marxist, and yes, even comparing him to Hitler.
The people who understand these terms know how ridiculous they are. (I loved Jon Stewart and his bit about the S-word.) But the people using them, and repeating them, clearly did not understand them.
Now the craziness continues:
WASHINGTON — A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.
Obama as Marxist or Hitler
Paul Broun continues this stupidity, even acknowledging that he sounds crazy:
"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may may not, I hope not but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."
It is true that the US is potentially in grave danger, especially economically, and therefore vulnerable. And that we can look at the beginning of the 30s to take lessons from what might happen, and what our possible paths are. Both Hitler and FDR came to power at about the same time, in countries that were suffering from the Great Depression. Both leaders started with work projects to get their economies going again. In the US we have many public works, in Germany there were the network of roads and other buildings started by Hitler. Putting people to work is the best thing to do in these circumstances.
Germany was in worse shape than the US, and so perhaps it's not surprising that the people were readier to steal from one of their own ethnic groups, and readier to attack other countries. For this you have to look at the rhetoric of the leaders. Hitler's was full of hatred. Obama's, as we know, is not.
But which party does fill its rhetoric with evil epithets (even if their listeners don't know what they mean) and xenophobic rhetoric? Which party contains large elements ready to proclaim a portion of its population as un American? Which party has already led the country into war even though we were not attacked - faking the evidence, as Hitler did, when he attacked Poland in September 1939? Which party has been chipping away at, make that ripping away, the rights of its people?
Oh, right, the Democrats hasn't been doing these things. Which party was it?