to be fair not all lessons need to be pleasant. by diving into the darkest parts of humanity you can learn things you cant if you only stay where you feel most comfortable.
Or you can enter a depressive spiral, or at least come very close. I’m speaking from personal experience here.
miados
i did that when nobody tried to touch the darkness because others forced it on me. I remember my classmates kept asking if they were on my kill list which i never had because they thought i was the most likely to pull a columbine.
CoffeeBurps
When I was in high school, some guys would say if anyone was gonna shoot up the school, it would be me. Cause I was quiet and didn’t care about talking about people. They asked me the same thing, if they were on my kill list. I turned it into a joke and said oh absolutely, you’re near the top. It was doubly satisfying because I thought it was hilarious and they stopped talking to me.
Mollyscribbles
Same. I got sent to five different school counselors who told me to deal with the bullying by ignoring them and they’d leave me alone, then turned the focus to checking to see how homicidal I seemed to be. On the bright side, the bullying stopped entirely once I bought a black trenchcoat.
“five different school counselors who told me to deal with the bullying by ignoring them and they’d leave me alone,”
I hate that particular lie so much. Why don’t they ever give good advice for dealing with bullies? Or just “Sorry that’s happening, I have no idea how to stop it”? instead of feel-good lies that don’t work?
I’d have settled for “sorry you’re being bullied, kid. That’s some bullshit”.
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” is crap, though. It only works with some bullies, and only if they never get a reaction from you. Once they have, they’ll keep at it no matter how long you ignore them
Lone Wolf
If anything, my experiences being bullied growing up only seemed to indicate that they took being ignored as a challenge to see how far they could keep pushing before I’d snap and lash out.
Needfuldoer
Then after you actually did lash out, you’d get in trouble and they’d play innocent…
ischemgeek
I am sorry you also dealt with that shit.
I also had the bad luck of having other kids start a rumor that I had a “kill list”. I was hauled out of class and had the cops search my locker and all my things, then was interrogated for hours by the school counselor. Even though I kept repeating that this was just my bullies’ latest way of bullying me, nobody would listen.
I didn’t have a “kill list.”
I did (do) have an asshole brain that likes to torment me with shit I don’t actually want to do but can’t stop thinking about. So guess what it latched onto after that for the next three years?
Fun times. */sarcasm*
Mollyscribbles
When they told me “They’re just trying to get a reaction out of you” I saw the most efficient way to get a reprieve as breaking down in tears pretty much immediately. They got their reaction, they spent less time harassing me.
I’m not saying this was actually a good idea but since I wasn’t dead inside it was hard to go with not actually reacting.
Mr. Bulbmin
Well, glad to know I’m not the only one who got shoved into a damned mental asylum for several days because of the testimony of shitweasels that managed to get away with completely grinding down my patience to the point where I did actually retaliate and threaten them, all because they were “easier to trust” than someone who spent most of his time away from most everyone else.
No? Just me?
But yeah, they eventually came to the realization that I was a perfectly rational human being.
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” is the lie adults tell so they can avoid accepting that THEY are failing to protect children. So is “He’s only hitting you/pulling your hair/insulting you because he likes you.” Impotent adults victim blaming to hide their guilt.
Mollyscribbles
Oh yeah, I got the “boys just do that to girls they like”. In junior high. In response to me telling the teacher the guy had threatened to kill my cat.
Pretty sure he didn’t like me.
Bicycle Bill
You both sound a lot like me, miados and Burps.
Of course, I’d also tell them that I had a note after their name reminding me to use a full clip.
miados
i cant stand realistic gore in movies etc so even if i wanted to after the first person i would end up vomiting and be unable to continue.
The sad part for Leslie is, she’s not supporting Robin for political reasons like Trump vs Hillary or Democrat vs Republican etc. She’s doing it because she thinks Robin is hot. … which, ultimately means, however shallow and pandering Robin is being portrayed here, Leslie is even MORE shallow and pandering, willing to completely give up her own principles in order to win brownie points with her target audience… :O
I fail to see how being attracted to someone horrible could make her worse than the horrible person.
Even if Leslie weren’t – right here, in today’s strip – changing her mind about dating Robin, it’s not like it would help Robin pass more discriminatory laws. Robin would still be the one doing that, like she was already.
Porsche is a German company that was part of the Third Reich’s military industry complex. So anyone who owns a Porsche can be connected to the Nazis with…one degree of separation.
The Volkswagen was commissioned by Hitler and Ferry Porsche had the first production car delivered to him. Anyone who owns a Beetle is one degree of separation, any other models are 2 degrees.
Lailah
IIRC, pretty much any major company with ‘volk’ in the name goes back to the Nazi party.
The Other Mike
“Anyone who owns a Beetle is one degree of separation, any other models are 2 degrees.”
So, where would my G1 Bumblebee and Goldbug toys put me?
SeanR
That’s a good question.
Since it’s just the likeness of a beetle, it’s probably two degrees, but Japan was one of the three Axis powers, so that might knock it back down to one degree.
Depends on if the toy market was somehow tied to the war effort or not.
Griiins
Your robot toys are actually spies for the Japanese government that is why furbies turn on all the time without you touching them, or why your robot listlessly walks across the floor without you doing a damn thing. Or that DAMN monkey with the symbols clashing them together and staring at you with his huge grin saying, “Imma gonna eat you, YES I AM!”
Roborat
After playing Fallout 4, my first impulse when I see those monkeys is to blow their head off.
Willoughby Chase
Hugo Boss – tailors to the Third Reich.
Bosch – made the doors on the gas chambers.
Jon Rich
In the grand scheme of things, though, “the villain’s tailor” is a position of at best minimal culpability, unless the clothes have, I don’t know, combat capabilities of their own.
Bosch gets no excuses, though.
fogel
In the grand scheme of things, everyone and everyone shrinks to insignificance. Seriously. The Nazis were SO deeply into symbolism and appearances that Boss SS uniforms definitely contributed to their sense of self and efficacy and so contributed to what they did. Bottom line: I don’t see why Boss should get a pass because all he did was outfit the guys who did the crimes.
Willoughby Chase
The Altright *love* the tailoring, and fogel is right. I can’t remember who called the nazis “hippies with helmets” but they were right, idiotic symbols and rituals were all part of the Nazi thing. Symbolism and mysticism were all the Nazis had going for them, they were shit at organizing which is why they lost.
The “cool” uniforms back-fired on the SS and Wehrmacht. Those uniforms were rubbish in cold weather.
The Soviets may have looked like a bunch of scruff-bags, but they were warm scruff-bags who survived.
Honestly, I can’t decide if the parallels between Trump and Hitler are scarier than they are freakishly uncanny anymore, and that’s saying a lot because they’re absolutely terrifying.
vlademir1
To be fair, Hitler had the full support of his party and the populace that put him in power legitimately thought he had some viable ideas on how to fix the problems of the day. Trump meanwhile was largely elected by people who have no trust in him but still had less in his opponent and is now the leader of a party that supports him only a bit more than they would have supported his opponent. There is further the fact that the amount of power centralized in the Chancellorship of Germany then was significantly greater than what has ever been available to the PotUS.
Idontcarenomore
Or not to be fair, Hitler published his book Mein Kamp (My Life) and detailed exactly what he planned to do. And then he did it.
Loki
FYI, that’s “Mein Kampf” (My Fight or My Struggle, depending on translation)
Clif
vlademir1 – Correct on all counts. I wonder if he realizes it yet?
CJ
I’m not sure about your distinction. The fact no history book on the third reich explained was how suddenly there were so many people following him when before, German society was at its most open. Right now I feel like I’m watching something like that happening again. You start with electing someone to make you great again and then people around you start acting like assholes, and the more people are acting that way the more likely it is that others fall in line.
And btw, there were people in his party who were against him. He killed some of them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
Khno
Sorry for my english which is particulary hectic when I speak about germany (as I think it in german first, then translate it to french then english)
There are many, with different explanations. For example antisemitism was already largely uses by political parties at the time. Winckler explains the fall of Weimar by the failure of socio-democrats (MSPD and USPD) to unite with the right and that they were too much influenced by the former spartakists – he very much tells that the radicality of the then-passed laws upseted the military chefs and that rather tot try to control their left they should have allied. That’s a bit too much excusing Noske massakers for me. Of course, the authoritarian communist theory is that the country wasn’t ready as cities as Berlin were nowhere as much an industrial city as a military-driven and kaiser-true administrative city, or as Bavaria was entirely too much rural (so Fröhlich). Libertarian communists explain it by the fall of the left and of organization, and the massive Freikörper use. For whoever is interested in it but doesn’t want to read history books I advice reading the literature of the time (Mann – the young one Döblin, Fallada, Zweig, Tucholski…). I too advice to read upon Austria history, were another fascist regime, somehow opposed to hitler, was at work whereas a great workers movement could have resisted (and some but not as many as could have been tried and died).
CJ
Goodbye to Berlin (the story Cabaret is based on) reflects the time well.
Joe Archer
Hitler’s story starts with the coup in Munic in 1923, when he allied with other ultra-conservative forces against the Stresemann chancellorship during the hyper-inflation and the French occupation of the Rhineland and Ruhr area, then acceptance of the conditions imposed by Versailles. While that putsch failed, Hitler spent only a nine months in prison, where he wrote “Mein Kampf”.
Basically, he was a militia leader who had marched against the state military, spent some time in prison where he wrote his pamphlet, then returned to work the political scene for the next eight years before winning the election through a coalition of conservative but not Nazi parties, like e.g. DNVP, the party of the Junker landholders of northeastern Germany.
The multi-party situation of te Weimar Republic is quite different from anything happening in the US. But, when Hitler became chancellor, he had less than one third of the German voters behind the NSDAP. The German equivalent of Murdoch and the Koch Brothers then thought they could ride the tiger, and proved that they couldn’t.
So: Trump doesn’t have a fraction of the history that that Austrian Charly Chaplin imitator had when he won his election So far that comparison is way over the top. (Let’s hope that remains to be true…)
Willoughby Chase
A lot of things are cultural and unwritten – those will go by the board.
Your institutions will be stress-tested. In the UK, there will be a march against the UK Supreme Court led by Farage, who seems to be fulfilling the role of some sort of ex officio minister, and some right wing groups.
Trump has said he wants to keep holding rallies.
Jon Rich
“Trump has said he wants to keep holding rallies.”
This is because he enjoys hearing people scream his name far, far more than he cares about the job of actually being President, which is why his staffers (reportedly) offered “total control of domestic and foreign policy” to their prospective VP nominees, specifically Kasich, who turned it down (one of his people was supposedly the person who leaked the exchange), and Pence, who accepted.
When a skeptical staffer asked what Trump would be in charge of if not either foreign or domestic policy, the response was (predctably) “making America great again.”
Chrissy
Damn you for being such a principled guy, Kasich!
Jon Rich
I mean, yes. But then, that’s one reason I voted for him. He’s still the only primary opponent who never endorsed the now-(regrettably)-President-elect.
On a more meta level, if Kasich *wasn’t* such a principled guy as to reject the offer, wouldn’t that prove that he wouldn’t have been a good enough VP in the first place? I mean, probably still better than Pence, but that’s a pretty low bar.
Chrissy
I’m right there with you, I’m just sad-laughing at the irony of it
Willoughby Chase
Job opening for an Albert Speer like figure.
Trump wants to build things. What better than to build arenas for his rallies?
Makkabee
The Nazis got into power with something like 33% of the vote. But in Germany’s multi-party system with the Nazis having 33% and the Communists having 17%, it was impossible to form a stable government coalition without one or the other, and Hindeburg decided the Nazis were the lesser evil.
Khno
And the Weimarer Republic was born in bloodbath and the government chose to arm right wing war veterans…there’s that too
Makkabee
Not a whole lot of choice there when the Entente had all but disbanded the German army, Poles were deciding they didn’t care for the border set at the table and making a grab for Upper Silesia, and Communists were trying to set up Soviets in Bavaria, turning to the Freikorps seemed like the least bad of a nasty set of options. And if it hadn’t been for the Great Depression and the inability of the centrist parties to form a stable coalition with either the non-Communist left or the non-Nazi right, it would have paid off. The Nazi putsch in Munich in the 20s was a fiasco, after all.
If only they’d left Hitler in jail…
-Sentinel-
I’ve heard people say that Trump is more a Mussolini than a Hitler… not that it’s much comfort.
Needfuldoer
“Cheeto Mussolini” just works, though.
Jon Rich
Oh my god, where did you hear that? Did you *come up with* that? Can I use it, please, pretty pretty please?
Yeah, I’m way more scared of Pence than I am of Trump, for one thing, the republicans actually love Pence;And Pence is the one who likes the idea of conversion therapy.
Trump might talk about his ‘wall’, but Pence is the one I could see going through with mass deportation.
podian
You know, that was actually really clever – pick such a horrible VP that people will still prefer Trump to remain in office…
Actually, Benito Mussolini also died in ’45, and apparently proclaimed that he would be reincarnated to take over another, greater nation. I don’t know if that was real or just an internet-urban-legend started when someone noticed that Trump was born in ’46, though.
522 thoughts on “Provisionally”
Ana Chronistic
still doing better than if Trump was there
Ana Chronistic
Leslie putting away her lesson plans and planning a Robinexit
miados
to be fair not all lessons need to be pleasant. by diving into the darkest parts of humanity you can learn things you cant if you only stay where you feel most comfortable.
Pablo360
Or you can enter a depressive spiral, or at least come very close. I’m speaking from personal experience here.
miados
i did that when nobody tried to touch the darkness because others forced it on me. I remember my classmates kept asking if they were on my kill list which i never had because they thought i was the most likely to pull a columbine.
CoffeeBurps
When I was in high school, some guys would say if anyone was gonna shoot up the school, it would be me. Cause I was quiet and didn’t care about talking about people. They asked me the same thing, if they were on my kill list. I turned it into a joke and said oh absolutely, you’re near the top. It was doubly satisfying because I thought it was hilarious and they stopped talking to me.
Mollyscribbles
Same. I got sent to five different school counselors who told me to deal with the bullying by ignoring them and they’d leave me alone, then turned the focus to checking to see how homicidal I seemed to be. On the bright side, the bullying stopped entirely once I bought a black trenchcoat.
EvolutionistX
“five different school counselors who told me to deal with the bullying by ignoring them and they’d leave me alone,”
I hate that particular lie so much. Why don’t they ever give good advice for dealing with bullies? Or just “Sorry that’s happening, I have no idea how to stop it”? instead of feel-good lies that don’t work?
Sorry, pet peeve. You can guess why.
Fart Captor
I’d have settled for “sorry you’re being bullied, kid. That’s some bullshit”.
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” is crap, though. It only works with some bullies, and only if they never get a reaction from you. Once they have, they’ll keep at it no matter how long you ignore them
Lone Wolf
If anything, my experiences being bullied growing up only seemed to indicate that they took being ignored as a challenge to see how far they could keep pushing before I’d snap and lash out.
Needfuldoer
Then after you actually did lash out, you’d get in trouble and they’d play innocent…
ischemgeek
I am sorry you also dealt with that shit.
I also had the bad luck of having other kids start a rumor that I had a “kill list”. I was hauled out of class and had the cops search my locker and all my things, then was interrogated for hours by the school counselor. Even though I kept repeating that this was just my bullies’ latest way of bullying me, nobody would listen.
I didn’t have a “kill list.”
I did (do) have an asshole brain that likes to torment me with shit I don’t actually want to do but can’t stop thinking about. So guess what it latched onto after that for the next three years?
Fun times. */sarcasm*
Mollyscribbles
When they told me “They’re just trying to get a reaction out of you” I saw the most efficient way to get a reprieve as breaking down in tears pretty much immediately. They got their reaction, they spent less time harassing me.
I’m not saying this was actually a good idea but since I wasn’t dead inside it was hard to go with not actually reacting.
Mr. Bulbmin
Well, glad to know I’m not the only one who got shoved into a damned mental asylum for several days because of the testimony of shitweasels that managed to get away with completely grinding down my patience to the point where I did actually retaliate and threaten them, all because they were “easier to trust” than someone who spent most of his time away from most everyone else.
No? Just me?
But yeah, they eventually came to the realization that I was a perfectly rational human being.
Shadlyn Wolfe
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” is the lie adults tell so they can avoid accepting that THEY are failing to protect children. So is “He’s only hitting you/pulling your hair/insulting you because he likes you.” Impotent adults victim blaming to hide their guilt.
Mollyscribbles
Oh yeah, I got the “boys just do that to girls they like”. In junior high. In response to me telling the teacher the guy had threatened to kill my cat.
Pretty sure he didn’t like me.
Bicycle Bill
You both sound a lot like me, miados and Burps.
Of course, I’d also tell them that I had a note after their name reminding me to use a full clip.
miados
i cant stand realistic gore in movies etc so even if i wanted to after the first person i would end up vomiting and be unable to continue.
DudeMyDadOwnsADealership
Oh hell yes.
(((Mkvenner)))
She’s dragging he feet on invoking Article 50.
Ana Chronistic
Just occurred to me that DeSexit might’ve been better? XD
Roborat
Well, she definitely did a Debreastit.
Jason
The sad part for Leslie is, she’s not supporting Robin for political reasons like Trump vs Hillary or Democrat vs Republican etc. She’s doing it because she thinks Robin is hot. … which, ultimately means, however shallow and pandering Robin is being portrayed here, Leslie is even MORE shallow and pandering, willing to completely give up her own principles in order to win brownie points with her target audience… :O
Fart Captor
I fail to see how being attracted to someone horrible could make her worse than the horrible person.
Even if Leslie weren’t – right here, in today’s strip – changing her mind about dating Robin, it’s not like it would help Robin pass more discriminatory laws. Robin would still be the one doing that, like she was already.
Kamino Neko
Thinking somebody is hot, while actively working against the horrible things they’re doing makes you worse than them?
Rowen Morland
She didn’t vote DeSanto though.
QD
Please let this comment be the first on every future strip
Ana Chronistic
idk if that’d work for Becky/Dina strips, but sure XD
AnvilPro
Have you every played Six Degrees of Hitler? It’s surprisingly easy
miados
ok how about um…….. bill gates. or am i guessing how the game works wrong
Miyto
Ok so to get to hitler in 5 steps from Bill Gates:
competition: Apple: 1984: fascist dictator: hitler.
Done.
SeanR
Here’s one.
Gates sold PCDOS to IBM
IBM sold Hollerith sorting machines to the Nazis
Rukduk
Porsche is a German company that was part of the Third Reich’s military industry complex. So anyone who owns a Porsche can be connected to the Nazis with…one degree of separation.
Opus the Poet
The Volkswagen was commissioned by Hitler and Ferry Porsche had the first production car delivered to him. Anyone who owns a Beetle is one degree of separation, any other models are 2 degrees.
Lailah
IIRC, pretty much any major company with ‘volk’ in the name goes back to the Nazi party.
The Other Mike
“Anyone who owns a Beetle is one degree of separation, any other models are 2 degrees.”
So, where would my G1 Bumblebee and Goldbug toys put me?
SeanR
That’s a good question.
Since it’s just the likeness of a beetle, it’s probably two degrees, but Japan was one of the three Axis powers, so that might knock it back down to one degree.
Depends on if the toy market was somehow tied to the war effort or not.
Griiins
Your robot toys are actually spies for the Japanese government that is why furbies turn on all the time without you touching them, or why your robot listlessly walks across the floor without you doing a damn thing. Or that DAMN monkey with the symbols clashing them together and staring at you with his huge grin saying, “Imma gonna eat you, YES I AM!”
Roborat
After playing Fallout 4, my first impulse when I see those monkeys is to blow their head off.
Willoughby Chase
Hugo Boss – tailors to the Third Reich.
Bosch – made the doors on the gas chambers.
Jon Rich
In the grand scheme of things, though, “the villain’s tailor” is a position of at best minimal culpability, unless the clothes have, I don’t know, combat capabilities of their own.
Bosch gets no excuses, though.
fogel
In the grand scheme of things, everyone and everyone shrinks to insignificance. Seriously. The Nazis were SO deeply into symbolism and appearances that Boss SS uniforms definitely contributed to their sense of self and efficacy and so contributed to what they did. Bottom line: I don’t see why Boss should get a pass because all he did was outfit the guys who did the crimes.
Willoughby Chase
The Altright *love* the tailoring, and fogel is right. I can’t remember who called the nazis “hippies with helmets” but they were right, idiotic symbols and rituals were all part of the Nazi thing. Symbolism and mysticism were all the Nazis had going for them, they were shit at organizing which is why they lost.
The “cool” uniforms back-fired on the SS and Wehrmacht. Those uniforms were rubbish in cold weather.
The Soviets may have looked like a bunch of scruff-bags, but they were warm scruff-bags who survived.
SUGauthor
Way easier now that we’ve elected his reincarnation.
Pablo360
Honestly, I can’t decide if the parallels between Trump and Hitler are scarier than they are freakishly uncanny anymore, and that’s saying a lot because they’re absolutely terrifying.
vlademir1
To be fair, Hitler had the full support of his party and the populace that put him in power legitimately thought he had some viable ideas on how to fix the problems of the day. Trump meanwhile was largely elected by people who have no trust in him but still had less in his opponent and is now the leader of a party that supports him only a bit more than they would have supported his opponent. There is further the fact that the amount of power centralized in the Chancellorship of Germany then was significantly greater than what has ever been available to the PotUS.
Idontcarenomore
Or not to be fair, Hitler published his book Mein Kamp (My Life) and detailed exactly what he planned to do. And then he did it.
Loki
FYI, that’s “Mein Kampf” (My Fight or My Struggle, depending on translation)
Clif
vlademir1 – Correct on all counts. I wonder if he realizes it yet?
CJ
I’m not sure about your distinction. The fact no history book on the third reich explained was how suddenly there were so many people following him when before, German society was at its most open. Right now I feel like I’m watching something like that happening again. You start with electing someone to make you great again and then people around you start acting like assholes, and the more people are acting that way the more likely it is that others fall in line.
And btw, there were people in his party who were against him. He killed some of them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
Khno
Sorry for my english which is particulary hectic when I speak about germany (as I think it in german first, then translate it to french then english)
There are many, with different explanations. For example antisemitism was already largely uses by political parties at the time. Winckler explains the fall of Weimar by the failure of socio-democrats (MSPD and USPD) to unite with the right and that they were too much influenced by the former spartakists – he very much tells that the radicality of the then-passed laws upseted the military chefs and that rather tot try to control their left they should have allied. That’s a bit too much excusing Noske massakers for me. Of course, the authoritarian communist theory is that the country wasn’t ready as cities as Berlin were nowhere as much an industrial city as a military-driven and kaiser-true administrative city, or as Bavaria was entirely too much rural (so Fröhlich). Libertarian communists explain it by the fall of the left and of organization, and the massive Freikörper use. For whoever is interested in it but doesn’t want to read history books I advice reading the literature of the time (Mann – the young one Döblin, Fallada, Zweig, Tucholski…). I too advice to read upon Austria history, were another fascist regime, somehow opposed to hitler, was at work whereas a great workers movement could have resisted (and some but not as many as could have been tried and died).
CJ
Goodbye to Berlin (the story Cabaret is based on) reflects the time well.
Joe Archer
Hitler’s story starts with the coup in Munic in 1923, when he allied with other ultra-conservative forces against the Stresemann chancellorship during the hyper-inflation and the French occupation of the Rhineland and Ruhr area, then acceptance of the conditions imposed by Versailles. While that putsch failed, Hitler spent only a nine months in prison, where he wrote “Mein Kampf”.
Basically, he was a militia leader who had marched against the state military, spent some time in prison where he wrote his pamphlet, then returned to work the political scene for the next eight years before winning the election through a coalition of conservative but not Nazi parties, like e.g. DNVP, the party of the Junker landholders of northeastern Germany.
The multi-party situation of te Weimar Republic is quite different from anything happening in the US. But, when Hitler became chancellor, he had less than one third of the German voters behind the NSDAP. The German equivalent of Murdoch and the Koch Brothers then thought they could ride the tiger, and proved that they couldn’t.
So: Trump doesn’t have a fraction of the history that that Austrian Charly Chaplin imitator had when he won his election So far that comparison is way over the top. (Let’s hope that remains to be true…)
Willoughby Chase
A lot of things are cultural and unwritten – those will go by the board.
Your institutions will be stress-tested. In the UK, there will be a march against the UK Supreme Court led by Farage, who seems to be fulfilling the role of some sort of ex officio minister, and some right wing groups.
Trump has said he wants to keep holding rallies.
Jon Rich
“Trump has said he wants to keep holding rallies.”
This is because he enjoys hearing people scream his name far, far more than he cares about the job of actually being President, which is why his staffers (reportedly) offered “total control of domestic and foreign policy” to their prospective VP nominees, specifically Kasich, who turned it down (one of his people was supposedly the person who leaked the exchange), and Pence, who accepted.
When a skeptical staffer asked what Trump would be in charge of if not either foreign or domestic policy, the response was (predctably) “making America great again.”
Chrissy
Damn you for being such a principled guy, Kasich!
Jon Rich
I mean, yes. But then, that’s one reason I voted for him. He’s still the only primary opponent who never endorsed the now-(regrettably)-President-elect.
On a more meta level, if Kasich *wasn’t* such a principled guy as to reject the offer, wouldn’t that prove that he wouldn’t have been a good enough VP in the first place? I mean, probably still better than Pence, but that’s a pretty low bar.
Chrissy
I’m right there with you, I’m just sad-laughing at the irony of it
Willoughby Chase
Job opening for an Albert Speer like figure.
Trump wants to build things. What better than to build arenas for his rallies?
Makkabee
The Nazis got into power with something like 33% of the vote. But in Germany’s multi-party system with the Nazis having 33% and the Communists having 17%, it was impossible to form a stable government coalition without one or the other, and Hindeburg decided the Nazis were the lesser evil.
Khno
And the Weimarer Republic was born in bloodbath and the government chose to arm right wing war veterans…there’s that too
Makkabee
Not a whole lot of choice there when the Entente had all but disbanded the German army, Poles were deciding they didn’t care for the border set at the table and making a grab for Upper Silesia, and Communists were trying to set up Soviets in Bavaria, turning to the Freikorps seemed like the least bad of a nasty set of options. And if it hadn’t been for the Great Depression and the inability of the centrist parties to form a stable coalition with either the non-Communist left or the non-Nazi right, it would have paid off. The Nazi putsch in Munich in the 20s was a fiasco, after all.
If only they’d left Hitler in jail…
-Sentinel-
I’ve heard people say that Trump is more a Mussolini than a Hitler… not that it’s much comfort.
Needfuldoer
“Cheeto Mussolini” just works, though.
Jon Rich
Oh my god, where did you hear that? Did you *come up with* that? Can I use it, please, pretty pretty please?
Robert
I keep trying to push ‘Mango Mussolini’
Kamino Neko
I’ve seen him called Il Douche (or even Ill Douche).
Rukduk
Wait a minute. Trump’s like 70 right? Hitler died in mid 1945. Add nine months… ahhh shit.
Pablo360
DONALD TRUMP IS FEGELEIN
That’s what you were going for, right?
nobodybasically
God no. Then Pence takes control. And he’s competent enough to ACHIEVE all of the horrible things he believes in.
e
Yeah, I’m way more scared of Pence than I am of Trump, for one thing, the republicans actually love Pence;And Pence is the one who likes the idea of conversion therapy.
Trump might talk about his ‘wall’, but Pence is the one I could see going through with mass deportation.
podian
You know, that was actually really clever – pick such a horrible VP that people will still prefer Trump to remain in office…
(((Mkvenner)))
I know a 14 month gap.
Rukduk
Whew. That was a close one.
Jon Rich
Actually, Benito Mussolini also died in ’45, and apparently proclaimed that he would be reincarnated to take over another, greater nation. I don’t know if that was real or just an internet-urban-legend started when someone noticed that Trump was born in ’46, though.
Charles Phipps