Lynch at Large

Anti-Intellectuals Share Good Company?

Pat Lynch, HSG(high school grad)


Hitler believed that politicians made their mistake in not designing their message to appeal to the people of the lower classes. He had been a poor student, and perhaps because of his own sense of intellectual inadequacy, he mistrusted and ridiculed intellectuals as an adult.

“[Hitler’s] opinion of the intellect is, in fact, extremely low.” (L. p. 35.) He said, “The intellect has grown autocratic and has become a disease of life. We must distrust the intelligence and the conscience and must place our faith in our instincts.” (H. p. 214.)

Bush suffered from learning disabilities as a child. He felt inferior to the intellectuals he was surrounded by throughout his academic life. Consequently, he despises most intellectuals except those he knows are absolutely loyal to him. Need I enumerate here all the experts whose opinions and advice the “Decider” did not even consider, regarding terrorism, the economy, tax cuts, and the ridiculously naive belief that the Iraqi people would be so glad we “freed” them that putting millions of people formerly employed and paid by the state out of work would not create problems? As former Secretary of State Madeline Albright said on Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show,” ‘The problem with being so convinced you are right and that God is on your side is that you then have no “Plan B” for when “Plan A” fails.'

If war had actually been necessary, it is almost certain that the war and its aftermath would have proven less disastrous if it had been planned wisely -- if Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld had listened to those who knew a bit about war. Like General Shinseki and Colin Powell.

The Occupation did not even have much of a "Plan A."

Hitler believed in the superiority of “instinct,” and not only instinct, but people’s basest instincts. In Mein Kampf he wrote that most social movements did not take into great enough consideration “the soul of the nation’s lower classes.” Consequently, he crafted his message to appeal to the masses on an emotional level. He made the most of his “capacity to appeal to the most primitive, as well as the most ideal inclinations in man, to arouse the basest instincts and yet cloak them with nobility, justifying all actions as means to the attainment of an ideal goal.” (L. p. 70.)

Bush is killing people to bring "freedom" and "democracy" to them. Never mind that if they truly wanted freedom they would fight for it themselves. Never mind that if he were truly concerned about the interests of the Iraqi people, he would have guarded their museums and hospitals during the invasion rather than simply guarding their oil ministry. It is telling that at the wars onset he did not urge the Iraqi people to keep themselves safe and to not kill our soldiers, but he did admonish them to not sabotage the oil.

Hitler said “I am freeing men from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge; from the dirty and degrading modifications of a chimera called conscience and morality…(H. p. 215.) Brutality is respected. Brutality and physical strength. The plain man in the street respects nothing but brutal strength and ruthlessness. We want to be the supporters of the dictatorship of national reason, of national energy, of national – brutality and resolution.” (H. 218.)

Howard Dean said he wanted to be the candidate of “men who drive pick-up trucks with Confederate flags in the back,” but a huge segment of Bush’s support comes from those very people. Men who feel increasingly powerless because of the encroachment on what was formerly their turf by women and minorities. Men who have been further emasculated by a poor economy (for those who are not investors, and those who do not work in the defense industry), which has made them less able to do the “manly” thing, which is to provide adequately for their families.

It is, of course, George Bush and others like him who promote the anti-union, “free-trade” “pro investment” laws that are largely responsible for this fact, but G.W. has the gift of being able to “come off” as a regular guy even though he has probably not done an honest day of what such men would call “work” in his entire life. Like Hitler, he is rumored to be afraid of horses, but he is good at “talking tough” and also like Hitler, Bush knows that perception is more important than fact. “his [Hitler’s] greatest joy is to be considered as “one of the boys.”” (L. p. 56.)

Bush appealed to people on an emotional level, especially his macho white male base, when he said he would "smoke" bin Laden out, get him "dead or alive," bring him to "justice."

It is clear Bush did not lose a lot of sleep over the number of people he executed as governor of Texas. According to a staffer, he cut down on the time he spent reviewing death penalty convictions from half an hour to fifteen minutes, often on the very day of the scheduled execution. He does not seem to care " that many prisoners held at Guantanamo or elsewhere are simply people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Hitler believed in his own brand of what he considered "justice," but it was not justice tempered with mercy. Nor does mercy seem to be a high priority in Bush's brand of justice. It appears he does not worry over much that "criminals" even if the evidence indicates they have been convicted wrongly, remain in prison, or that an innocent person or persons might have been put to death while he was governor of Texas. The "collateral damage" to innocent civilians that is a fact of his war does not seem to bother him unduly either. He could joke about the fact that the weapons of mass destruction that were his alleged reason for going to war -- a war that has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands including 18,000 of our own soldiers -- did not exist.

Hitler knew the importance of defining his opponents rather than letting them define him. He said to Hanfstaengl:

“There is only so much room in a brain, so much wall space, as it were, and if you furnish it with your slogans, the opposition has no place to put up any pictures later on, because the apartment of the brain is already crowded with your furniture.” (H. 72.)

Think of Kerry portrayed as a “flip flopper.” No matter the truth of that statement, it became the” furniture of the brain” of many people since it was the first image put into play about Kerry.

The people in the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” must be the most frightened people on the face of the earth. And, among the most easily manipulated. As Noam Chomsky has said, “While all of Saddam’s neighbors hated him, only America feared him.” The unnecessary invasion of Iraq has created such animosity toward the United States that rather than making the world a safer place it has made the world a much more dangerous place. "Even the CIA says so" Because we have become an aggressively aggressive aggressor nation, other nations, have become afraid of us alright. So afraid that they, too, are seeking to build up their weapons arsenals. The world overwhelmingly wanted Kerry to become president. Something else most Bush supporters are unaware of.

As Jimmy Carter said in his marvelous new book "Our Endangered Values," America used to be a place where other nations would come to have their grievances redressed. That would be unthinkable today under Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice/Bolton.

Under other presidents the people of other nations felt envy, admiration, and a healthy respect for the United States and its might. For the most part we were viewed as a force for good. We were remembered as the saviours of the world. Alas, that is no longer the case.

Now America is, if not the most hated nation in the world, at least among the most hated nations in the world. And people do not ‘hate us for our freedoms,’ as Bush and his supporters say. They hate us because they perceive us as a bully nation and a threat. Judging by what they have seen in the past five years, they believe that if they have something we want, we might very well just come and take it.

I don’t know about you, but I was proud of the fact that my nation was, for the most part, considered a “different kind” of super power. A force for good. A country respected because it operated under the rule of law and was generally in the forefront in the fight for human rights. And now I am ashamed that we have become a thug nation. A bully nation. A nation that is openly stealing from the people of other nations. Simply because we can. Like Hitler did.

Of course in our imperialistic quest we brought England along with us. Against the will of most of its people. I have wondered if that was because England is so accustomed to being a major player in world events that Tony Blair could not stand for England not to be a “player” in this world event as well. He wanted to share and he wanted England to share in the glory. And then, of course, for the sake of its economy England, as well as the United States must cater to the economic dictates of a military industrial complex.

Bush is becoming more mad as time goes on. In the beginning his words were humble, but no more. A diplomat reported about Hitler, “When I first met him, his logic and sense of realities had impressed me, but as time went on he appeared to me to become more and more unreasonable and more and more convinced of his own infallibility and greatness.” (L. p. 34.)

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Notice the change in Bush from ‘We are not going to engage in nation building, we are going to have a humble foreign policy,’(2000) to ‘it is our job to bring liberty and freedom to the entire world.’ Inaugural address 2005.

“My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter.” (H. p. 39.)
“Bring em on!” Bush.

Hitler "places loyalty and justice as the two greatest virtues and observes them with scrupulous care.” (L. p. 59.)

Competence means nothing in the Bush administration. No one has been fired because of all of the mistakes made by this administration in ignoring the terrorist threat before 9/11, or in the disastrous lack of sound planning involved in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the torture scandal, the Valerie Plame affair. Loyalty is everything. And Bush, like Hitler, has the gift of inspiring loyalty among the people of his inner circle. He appoints cronies and campaign contributors to important positions. All presidents do this, but most try to appoint people who are not total incompetents or dolts to positions that matter.

“He [Hitler] has an extraordinary memory and continually recalls amusing incidents from the past lives of those around him. These he tells to his staff at large. He is an excellent mimic and often plays out the role of the individual involved to the great amusement of the staff while the individual involved must sit by and watch the performance much to his own embarrassment… He manages to endear himself to each and every one of them.” (L. p. 68.)

We hear Bush now does not want to hear any bad news. He wants no contrary opinions. Goss’s first priority as CIA director was to “support” the president. Not to provide him with the best intelligence, even if it is not what he does not want to hear, but to support him.

We hear that if Bush believes he has been crossed he flies into obscene rages. As did Hitler. I remember Bush looking up during his 2004 State of the Union address when he said some provisions in the Homeland Security bill were set to expire. Some in the crowd began to applaud, and he looked up with absolute rage in his eyes. Likewise his demeanor during his first debate with Kerry was telling. He was being criticized. He was obviously angry, and was having a hard time sitting still. Someone was likely whispering into his ear piece “George, calm down!” Without an audience, one can imagine what his reaction would have been!! He simply stomped off the stage when asked about his relationship with Ken Lay -- a man he initially said he barely knew.

“He [Hitler] quickly became impatient if the details of a problem were brought to him. He was greatly averse to experts and had little regard for their opinion.” (L. 80.) “If someone voices the opinion that the proposed plan is too difficult or onerous he becomes extremely angry and frequently says: “I do not look for people having clever ideas of their own, but rather people who are clever in finding ways and means of carrying out my ideas.” (H. 82.) He does not think things out in logical and consistent fashion, gathering all available information pertinent to the problem, mapping out alternative courses of action, and then weighing the evidence pro and evidence pro and con for each of them before reaching a decision… Having the solution he then begins to look for facts that will prove it is correct.” (L. 82.)

We now know Bush/Cheney wanted to go to war with Iraq before they were even installed in office. But they needed a “new Pearl Harbor” to get the people to go along. When regular intelligence channels did not provide Cheney with the information he needed to make a case for war with Iraq, he actually went to the CIA and pressured the agents to tell him what he wanted to hear. An unprecedented departure from normal protocol. In the Pentagon, the “Office of Special Plans” was formed to concentrate on putting together more “acceptable intelligence.” Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a lifelong conservative who worked in the Pentagon in the run-up to war and who took early retirement rather than be part of the dishonesty of that special office said they would take bits and pieces of intelligence and put them together to make that information ‘say things they knew were not true.’ (video 9/11, Hijacking Catastrophe.) And now because of the Downing Street minutes we know that in England when British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw noted that justification for war would be a challenge because the “case was thin,” Richard Dearlove, head of England’s CIA equivalent MI-6 then said, “The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy.”

We also know former CIA case officer Lindsay Moran said that former CIA director George Tenet’s managers told their people, “Let’s face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it.”

The best people in the administration, the people with integrity who tried to provide wise counsel, saddest among these, perhaps, Colin Powell, resigned because their counsel was ignored, and they, themselves, were marginalized. As Powell's former chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson said, America's foreign policy was hijacked by a "cabal" of neocons.

Langer wrote that Hitler's "ability to persuade others to repudiate their individual consciences and allow him to assume that role… has enabled Hitler to make full use of terror and mobilize the fears of the people, which he evaluated with an almost uncanny precision.” (L. 73, 74.) Of course in the case of Bush, it is Karl Rove who has performed these functions using Bush as a convenient mouth piece.

One can imagine Bush telling the man he calls “Turd Blossom” to do what he has to do to get the job done, but also telling him he doesn’t want to know what that “whatever it takes” is. That way he can deny knowledge.

Any competent leader who really wanted to know the name of the person who leaked Valerie Plame’s identity would have garnered that information in days, because his underlings would have been too afraid of him not to tell him. The only logical conclusion that can be drawn concerning the (three years long and counting) Valerie Plame debacle is that Bush hoped if he ignored the scandal the press would ignore it as well, and the people would forget about it. And now it appears that Bush, as well as Cheney were involved to some degree in that leak. They have proven over and over again they consider themselves above the law and accountable to noone. It appears that our Congress and the Justice Department is willing to let them be just that -- accountable to noone, if we, the people let them get away with it.

It can be easily shown, and has been, that whenever Bush suffered a reverse in the polls, the Homeland Security danger index would be raised to orange. We now also know that Tom Ridge was not always in favor of those alerts, and that there have been virtually no terror alerts since the November 2004 elections.

“He [Hitler]is the master of the art of propaganda. Ludecke writes: He has a matchless instinct for taking advantage of every breeze to raise a political whirlwind. No official scandal was so petty that he could not magnify it into high treason; he could ferret out the most deviously ramified corruption in high places and plaster the town with the bad news.”

Hitler’s primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” (L. 75.)

These rules worked very well for Bush through 9/11, the first year of the war and the 2004 election, but the people have now begun to "cool off."

To be concluded...

Bio: Lonna Gooden VanHorn was born and raised on a small farm in Minnesota. She is the mother of 6, a grandmother, and the wife of a Vietnam veteran. Formerly a person who did not "get involved" in controversy, the constant lies and deceit of the Bush administration have motivated her to become a trouble maker in her old age.
 

WHEW! I have no idea what brought this on, but I iwll try to do better in the future.
Pat
 

Thank You. You might try a little insight from time to time.
 

Adolf Hitler did not gain power by means of the ballot box. Rather Herr Hitler tried unsuccessfully to do so and was defeated, rightly so, by the German people on a number of occasions. Hitler bullied, attacked, connived, and schemed his way into office. He forcibly and illegally seized power.

Adolf Hitler should not be a model for anything than a maniacal, insane, and severely mentally & socially distubed as well as depraved individual.

As much as I do not support either George W. Bush or Howard Dean, believing they both represent the more extremes of the ideological spectrum, they at least have used democratic means to seek and hold office.
 

The brilliantly original Bigdaddio might consider giving Dave Letterman a little credit from time to time and I must admit his "Bigdaddio" moniker is screamingly original!!
If you truly believe your sophomoric lists are evidence of the depths of your originality wellsprings. "I am stupified "!, quoting Rob Bartlett's quoting Dr. Phil. BTW, many of your references to matters psychotherapeutic in the list dedicated to me were not original. And I'm amazed by your admission you suspected I was a therapist in my former life. How could anybody have suspected you knew!Oh; I'm glad you found the small penis site. Perhaps you'll be comforted.
Also, I'm gratified Drew is comfortable in his belief Dumbya gained power via his assumed honest democratic means. That's a comfort level I don't share. Mrs. VanHorn provides abundant evidence of Hitler's montrous character as could anyone with an intellect beyond that of a rock; but the point of her article,it appears to me, is to pose the seeming similarities between the two men: a point of view I share with considerable discomfort.
 

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain
other sets of people are human.": Aldous Huxley -(1894-1963) Author

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“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to
see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most
wretched sort of life as paradise” : Adolf Hitler - German Chancellor, leader of the
Nazi party

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“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and
over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."—” :
George W. Bush - 43rd US President
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time
as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or
military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for
the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is
the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the
greatest enemy of the State.": Joseph Goebbels was born in 1897 and died
in 1945. Goebbels was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda
________________________________________________

Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
Deny the truth often enough and it becomes a lie. If anyone still insists on telling the truth, label them "conspiracy
theorists."Karl Rove

What I tell you 3 times is true. Wizard Of Oz-Lewis Carrol

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of
state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the
first duty of intelligent men: George Orwell

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They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because
they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not
sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening : George
Orwell

=

Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind: George Orwell

=

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own
side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them: George
Orwell
 

Public domain references do not require citations . Thanks for the editing assistance. It's gratifying you have such capacity for focusing on the important details in life, but then , " sweating the small stuff " seems
to be a special affinity for you.
 

"people call me bigdaddio because i'm 6'2" and 250lb of lean, hard swingin' man meat."
Is this the Display Sign outside your Chiropractic Clinic? If not, I'd suspect your arthritic, octogenarian clientele might enjoy it.
 

Dear Dr."Swingin' Man Meat",
Spoken as an expert on getting paid for ' adjusting little old ladies suffering, misery and ????; by "laying your 'manly' hands upon them" ...all covered by Medicare I'm sure.
I enjoyed your cryptic message regarding your not having a problem with bravery. Does this mean you can finally 'lose' the plugin night light now?
 

Dear Bigdaddio,
Finally we've discovered common ground. We both treasure our nitey-liteys! Night-Lights forever!
Yours In Solidarity!
Roy
 

Not into boxing as it's an " immature, selfish, petty " sport.