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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (749485)	10/25/2013 5:12:20 PM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574536

>What? I already conceded that point. At the time, Obama was using the Chamberlain approach of appeasement to keep the Rs happy. Of course we all know appeasement only makes bullies more bold. Not exactly. He, like Chamberlain (I normally hate this analogy, but this is where the comparison is a bit more apt than most of the time when it's used), underestimated just how badly the Tea Party was willing to use any means necessary, including allowing defense spending to be cut, to get what they wanted (no one, including Churchill, really thought that Hitler could be what he became -- as late as 1935 Churchill thought Hitler was GOOD for Germany), and didn't have enough of a political advantage to do much of anything else (Britain likely would've gotten its ass kicked if it tried to stand up to Germany in 1938 because Germany had put a lot more work into building itself back up after WWI than the rest of Europe did -- kinda like the Kochs, et al threw a ton of resources into building up the Tea Party that the Dems hadn't figured out how to match). This time around, the Tea Party crossed a line that tanked the Republican standing with the American people(like when Hitler had gone so far that even isolationist America agreed to get involved), that Obama doesn't have to put Social Security and Medicare cuts, and he understands more and more each day what he's dealing with, and now it seems like he's ready to fight to roll back the sequester... and the establishment Republicans very well could be the equivalent of the Soviet Union in this scenario, which is apt, because the Tea Party now thinks that establishment Republicans are Commies! Chamberlain's appeasement isn't as huge a faux pas as we now make it out to be. What was wrong with him is what he did after Hitler took advantage. Rather than really strongly making the case to the U.S. that, hey, look, this guy's a homicidal maniac and we've gotta do something, he crumbled and did nothing. And it took Churchill, who also wasn't the full-on visionary hero history has made him out to be -- not only did he not see Hitler coming, he wrote love letters to Stalin about Communism having some good ideas -- but was steeled by his predecessor's failure and much had much more resolve when it came to coalition building, not to mention a better arsenal and more prepared citizenry in the '40s than Chamberlain had in the '30s, to begin to clean up the mess. So, yeah, I like the metaphor here, but the hope is that Obama, who legitimately is the Chamberlain in what is the beginning of the scenario, can also be the Churchill, rather than waiting for the guy who isn't shell-shocked (Hillary?) a couple of years later to strike back. The chances look half-decent so far. If he does, the closer analogue in the WWII metaphor would be FDR, though I don't love it, given that Japan wasn't really an existential threat to the U.S. when Pearl Harbor happened. Ain't history fun? -Z