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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (57540)	12/23/2004 3:18:37 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

Ray, no I haven't read Mein Kampf [a few excerpts sufficient to see that any suggestion that people were surprised about his attacks on Jews is absurd - he was out to get them and blamed them for German problems; rightly so in some respects as they were out to get him when they could see where he was going]. <Hitler may not have pulled the literal trigger on ravaging his European neighbors. However, in the absence of a charismatic leader like Hitler, there never would have been the miltarized nation-state that gave rise to WW II. Much the same thing can be said today about George Bush. He's an odious little man, but his strength is that he's a superb propagandist and is capable of bringing out the worst in Americans. Xenophobia, militarism, disdain for civil rights and anti-intellectualism are all common aspects of the collective American psyche. The difference between a Franklin Roosevelt and George Bush is that Roosevelt attempted to bring out the best in people, and Bush is succeeding in bringing out the worst.> Americans probably don't see it, but there's a fairly teutonic streak in a lot of Americans. For all the vaunted freedom, there's a great puritanism and repressiveness. Which seems contradictory for the two to co-exist - they only do while the majority is mostly freedom-oriented. When it flips to a repressive majority, the USA could make Nazi Germany look like an amateur actors' guild. That duality exists in all of us to a greater or lesser extent, but Germans seem to have it in their DNA, or at least deeply embedded in their culture. As with Japan, since their pounding in WWII, the society is very peaceful but the same strict rule-bound attitudes are manifest in other ways. But heck, the same DNA and repression can be found everywhere in morphing shades of horror, so it's not surprising if the USA was to have its day. The Emperors of China and the Mongols were not exactly freedom-loving pussies. Nor those of Russia. Nor the Maoris. Nor anywhere. For now though, the USA and King George II are still in benign mode, though there is a trend in the teutonic direction. Prescott Bush was a bit of a buddy with some German bosses I believe, guardian.co.uk so even the existing dynasty isn't all John Stuart Mill and Liberty bartleby.com Plus ca change, Mqurice