Are we living in a modern day facist Nazi Germany
POSTED BY: piratejenny
UPDATED: Friday, March 11, 2005 19:39
VIEWED: 21383
PAGE 2 of 10
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Originally posted by piratejenny:
I sometimes wonder if we as Americans are living in the beginning stages of Nazi Germany, I wonder how the Germans in Germany felt during those horendous times.. did they realize what was happening to their country???
You are right on. Its a pity there aren't more like you over there.
You see the trend, don't make the mistake the others did those many years ago: If Bush wins prepare to flee the country. Seriously.
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No, we don't. Volkswagens cost way more than they did back in the day. ;)
Tounge, cheek, we're good to go!
-Taylor (old VW owner, btw)
Uncharted Outlaw!
"The secret is understanding time."
See my Firefly Store: http://www.cafepress.com/NorCalRiviera
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Dear Lexiblock,
Read up on the Weimar Republic. America is not at all like it.
The problem with Americans against the current administration is they want to tie EVERYTHING to Htiler and Nazism. Why? This drives me nuts.
Simply state that America is blazing a brand new path and starting a forest fire in the meantime.
Here is some good reading:
http://www.lib.usf.edu/ldsu/index2.html?f=13716
(You have to excuse his memory with dates as he was fairly old (90ish) when he gave the interview)
Dr. Werner Von Rosenstiel's autobiographies give great insight into the Wiemar Rupblic and its collapse into Nazism as well as the US Army concentration camps)
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"Societies are supported by human activity, therefore they are constantly threatened by the human facts of self-intrest and stupidity." --Peter Berger
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Ahh... this is the degenerate namecalling that I know and love.
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This is typical of you selfcenterer american whiners! You have a damn low tax over there, yet you always bitch and complain. Here average tax is 60% - that is how it works in a CIVILIZED society. You want to be a selfcentered bastard who don't give a shit about others then move to the damn jungle!
Please go more in depth about how keeping some of our money makes us savages? I feel there might be an interesting point here. I just can't find it. Clarify if you can.
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Since this is all about hateing the president and current foreign policy, let me point out you got a perfectly valid chance coming up to elect them out of office. And contrary to what this post is backwards implying, the current administration will be happy to step down if they lose the election.
No they won't. And should they win they probably will start trying to change the laws so the president can run a third time.
Pure conjecture. You have nothing at all to back up this argument. Nobody does. The same thing could have been said for every other world leader with a limit on terms of office, and it would still mean absolutely nothing.
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As Joss says on the DVD commentaries "Everybody thinks he's righteous"
Hitler thought he was right, Saddam though he was right, Bin Laden thinks he is right (and both he and Bush talk to God who tells them what to do!)
And the unwashed Xenophobic masses of the US does not understand that the reason terrorism has gone so wildly up the last couple of years is because they have a president who ignores international law and acts like a mini dictator.
Yes, everybody believes what they are doing is right. It's kind of a requisite to doing anything. I'm genuinely not sure what you were getting at with this. The point seems to disprove itself because you are never going to find a leader who doesn't think they are righteous on some level. It's not necessarily a bad thing.
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You are stil BLIND TO THE FACTS!!
Just... wow. What information do you have that indicates that you aren't being controlled by propaganda as well? I, as an uninformed American, recognize the propaganda I get fed here, so I supplement my news with Canadian, British, and Austrailian sources. I still support President Bush. If studying history and finding foreign propaganda machines to counter my domestic ones makes me blind to the facts, so be it. I'm at least trying to find the real facts, it doesn't sound like you are given the timbre of your posts.
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It doesn't matter what YOU THINK - it's how others think that matters.
This little gem almost got coffee on my monitor. If you really need me to pick it apart, please let me know. I'm not sure I need to really point out the underlying lack of conviction this statement implies.
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Bush said screw you, we are going to war.
99% of the populations of the middle east HATE the US for that!
Your "99%" of the middle east hated us 30 years ago. The same "99%" of the middle east will probably still hate us 30 years from now.
~ Lost In The 'Verse
"About a year before we met, I spent 6 months on a moon where the primary form of recreation was juggling geese. My hand to god. Baby geese. Goslings. They were juggled!"
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Quote:
Originally posted by LostInTheVerse:
Ahh... this is the degenerate namecalling that I know and love.Quote:
This is typical of you selfcenterer american whiners! You have a damn low tax over there, yet you always bitch and complain. Here average tax is 60% - that is how it works in a CIVILIZED society. You want to be a selfcentered bastard who don't give a shit about others then move to the damn jungle!
Please go more in depth about how keeping some of our money makes us savages? I feel there might be an interesting point here. I just can't find it. Clarify if you can.
I think what the person you are quoting is trying to say is that we have become a selfish society, in that we would rather have lower taxes than better schools, better healthcare, etc for the less well off.
Now whether we want a "socialistic" society is up for debate, but let me address your "keeping some of our money" point. The biggest question I have to people like you is, how much of our money should we keep? This president seems to think there should be no end to tax cuts: Good times or bad, we should have tax cuts. Taken to its (absurd) conclusion, that would mean we have no tax at all. I hope everyone can agree that we can not have a government with no taxes at all.
So the question is when to stop with the taxcuts? I would think that having huge deficits would be an indication that we should at least stop, but I read that Bush is gearing for more cuts in his second term (which as a realist I am resigned to expect). As for the supply siders, who say that tax cuts will lead to increased revenue to the government due to economic stimulus, I say then: after three years of tax cuts, we still have a budget deficit that does not appear to be decreasing. Where is the increased tax revenues?
Now I am not advocating 60% income taxes, and I dont think we should have a completely socialistic social service system. But people who are blindly supporting tax cuts should sit down and think how far is enough?
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I won't say it will become Nazi germany, but I'm still amazed at what poeple get elected in the US (which means both the Democrats and Republicans).
Both of them answer to lobbysts and big companies and rich individuals who give large donations before they answer to the general public. Now don't tell me this isn't true because it is, both have to get large cash donations and funding to get enough airtime because otherwise they don't stand a chance.
Im also suprised at the attitudes of the US media. Big kudos for Jon Stewarts little outburst on Crossfire. I remember when Bush got some questions from an Irish reporter and he just told her to be quiet like she was a minion. She didn;t interupt him in the middle of a sentence so he could't finish, he just didnt like a dissident. For those who are not willing to take my word for it, I saw it on tv and will not go spend 3 hours to go and look for it.
My last argument also goes into my next, everytime they are on tv or anything else they are never confronted with tricky questions or anything the spindoctors didn't think of.
Maybe we won't have concentration camps for muslims, but I would't give this democracy a clean bill of health when it seems that the two big parties are using all the tricks they have to protect themselfes from democracy (preventing a third party from rising, plus all the other stuff I mentioned).
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Quote:
Originally posted by Jharrod:
If your referring to the Patriot ACT. I have yet to meet a man or hear of a man that was put away for selling weed and the patriot act is what caught him.
Actually there was a huge marijuana bust in Washington State a couple months back in which Patriot Act provisions were used to nab the smugglers... I'm guessing because the contraband came in from across the Washington/B.C. border. It made the local news here in Seattle.
Marijuana is one of the top three industries in all of B.C. and has been pretty much decriminalized up there. Terrorists were not involved... just, uhm, Canada's new breed of alternative entrepeneurs.
Back in the States, the Patriot Act is officially on the books and will be used however the powers that be see fit to use it. It's not just about "terrorists" anymore if, indeed, it ever was.
mattro
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Soundhack:
I completely agree with your post. I was trying to raise the point that having lower taxes than another country does not make us "uncivilized". To tell the truth, I don't know where I would set the bar but certainly not higher than 35%. Higher taxes would make me not want to work as hard, as the bonus for working hard really wouldn't be worth the effort.
I'm not sure I see the parallel between tax revenue and better education. Pouring more money into the education system in this country really only seems to line the pockets of the respective boards of education. There really has been no shown benefit of just pouring more money into the school system actually helping anything. This is not to say we should cut funding, but that we have to look at a real change of doctrine before we start spending more. Unfortunately I have not been able to figure out a plausible method so I can't put forth an example.
In response to the debt assertion: A lot of that really has to do with government spending. Unfortunately neither of the 2 main candidates for the presidency seem to have a small government spending agenda. Also, most supply-siders would agree that there is a bottom line to where lower taxes will reduce tax revenue. The problem is nobody knows exactly where it is, and it changes with market phases. Government is too slow to actually keep it optimized. The theory that defines this is called the Laffer Curve:
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/laffercurve.asp
Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming :)
~ Lost In The 'Verse
"About a year before we met, I spent 6 months on a moon where the primary form of recreation was juggling geese. My hand to god. Baby geese. Goslings. They were juggled!"
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nope. Situation isn't anywhere close to Germany...
Germany was suffering from a huge a** war reperations debt forced upon it by the allies from World War I, their morale was at an all time low... and I mean, they were in a big big depression with inflation being insane. Their country was weak, it was getting bullied by all sides.
The rise of Hitler was only a natural response, Germans have a tendency to seek a strong patriarchal government which takes care of its people. And that's what happened...
...America as of yet is still able to bully other people, and despite the fact we're alienating others, we're not in any need of radical changes that could sway american public opinion to another preemptive strike. Iraq... was a freak accident. Its not possible to use 9/11 as a reason again for war.
...but i could be wrong.
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There is at least ONE major parallel between the modern U.S. and Nazi Germany and that is in our prison populations.
Germany had a prison population similar to the U.S.'s in which a large percentage was made up of people arrested for non-violent (victimless) crimes. In their case: being the wrong religion, ethnicity or having the wrong sexual preference along with modern staples such as using drugs, being a prostitute, etc.
History informs us that the German prison system morphed into labor camps (benefiting corporations) and then, when the camps became too full, morphed again into concentration camps which disposed of the "unwanted" people.
Of all the modern industrialized nations, the U.S. has the largest percentage of its own people behind bars. Many corporate industries now benefit from this captive work force. Hell, even Microsoft uses prison labor to package it's products. At the rate America is arresting people while simultaneously running out of money for new prisons... what will the U.S. "labor camp" prisons morph into, I wonder?
So....
We know that people alleged to be terrorists can be held indefinitely without access to lawyers or a fair trial (see: Guantanamo Bay).
We've also seen marijuana smugglers treated as terrorists (WA State pot bust utilizing Patriot Act provisions).
It may not be the EXACT flavor of Germany's police state 60-70 years ago... but it's close enough for the same after taste: erosion of liberty.
How much scarier do things need to get?
mattro
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