Godwin’s Law: An Internet adage asserting that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1“; that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds, the point at which effectively the discussion or thread often ends.
In his latest opinion piece, Bryan Gould has leapt straight into the Hitler comparison, thus rendering his opinion null and void from the start. (To be fair, Gould was about halfway through before Hitler was mentioned in his current anti-Trump rant.)
When Republican senators put their own interests and those of their party ahead of those of the country and voted to acquit Donald Trump on his impeachment charges, they convinced the president that he was bullet-proof and could not be touched.
Newly emboldened by his acquittal, Trump has now defied one of the basic rules of a constitutional democracy and of a free country. […]
Since the Democrats announced that they intended to impeach Trump from day one, the ‘trumped’ up charges seemed entirely political. But we will leave that for the historians to decide.
Trump, however, post-impeachment, has not bothered with nice questions as to whether he is above or subject to the law.
He says instead “I am the law” – and he has acted on that claim by interfering in court cases involving his associates so as to acquit them and pardon them for wrongdoing. […]
I have not been able to source that quote and Gould offers no source so let’s move on to the pardons. So far Trump has issued 25 pardons and 10 commutations. Let’s just leave this statistic here …
In case his claim to “be the law” is challenged and rebutted, he has systematically stacked the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, with his own nominees.
Please name a president who has not stacked the judiciary with their own nominees.
And he has pursued a number of other steps that are reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany.
He has used as a political weapon a series of mass rallies at which he rouses his audience to chant slogans aimed at his opponents, […]
It is America – political rallies are what they do. Placard waving, chanting, excessive bunting and carry-on is as traditionally American as pumpkin pie.
He has pursued a long campaign of denigrating and badmouthing the media, and their role as a bastion of democracy, encouraging his followers to think that they are being lied to, and that only he can be relied upon to “tell it like it is” – all this, presumably, in an attempt to escape and circumvent the scrutiny of a free press.
I wonder which planet Gould has been residing on of late. The US press have been found wanting time and time again with their slanted (being polite here) reporting about Trump and current events.
Then the tinfoil hat stuff appears.
It might seem fanciful to detect an emerging dictatorship in the world’s greatest democracy, but we should recall that there was a similar reaction to the emergence of Hitler in 1930s Germany – and we should not forget that Hitler came to power by virtue of an election.
Oh dear!
The price of freedom is “eternal vigilance”. Dictatorships do not always come about by virtue of a coup or force of arms. They can emerge much more easily as a result of a series of small steps, small erosions of the safeguards that define our freedom and democracy, and that are not seen for what they are until it is too late.
BoP Times
“A series of small steps and erosions” sounds much like the situation in New Zealand right now.
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