They joined the Nazi Party to be youth leaders in an agricultural education program called the Landjahr, or “year on the land,” in which teenagers got agricultural training. My grandmother always maintained that she had joined the Nazis as an “idealist” drawn to the vision of rebuilding Germany, returning to a simpler time and, perversely, promoting equality.
In the Landjahr, sons and daughters of factory workers would live and work side by side with sons and daughters of aristocrats and wealthy industrialists. She liked the idea of returning to “traditional” German life
.. the Landjahr program was part of Hitler’s larger “Blut und Boden” (“blood and soil”) vision of making Germany a racially pure, agrarian society. The “racially pure” part was not something my grandmother ever mentioned.
.. “But didn’t you hear what Hitler was saying?”
.. “He said a lot of things — I didn’t listen to all of them.”
.. In the late 1930s there was talk of sending Jews to Madagascar and to “settlements” in the east.
.. In 1939, Nazi operatives donned Polish Army uniforms and staged a takeover of a German radio station at Gleiwitz that Hitler then held up as an act of provocation by the Poles.
.. “Didn’t you ever listen to the foreign news reports?”
“Allied propaganda” was my grandmother’s answer.
.. My grandmother heard what she wanted from a leader who promised simple answers to complicated questions.
Ralph Nader Exposes Donald Trump and Republicans Scam Healthcare Bill and Budget Cut Plans
Ralph Nader talks about $10 billion/year spent on intercontinental ballistic missile defense.
Suggests that if congressmen cut healthcare, make them share the same plan.
Trump says outrageous things as trial balloons.
Corporatism, Militarism, Racism
Racism: Avoiding Explanations that Suggest No Remedy
I think, a political and moral error to content oneself with explanations that suggest no remedy at all, or that suggest prima facie problematic responses like ridiculing, ignoring, disenfranchising, or going to war with large groups of fellow citizens, unless no other explanations are colorable. It turns out that there are lots of explanations consistent with increased susceptibility to racist appeals that also suggest remedies less vague and more constructive than, say, “fighting racism” or censoring the right-wing press.
The Douthat Scenario Is Coming True
Secularism is indeed correlated with greater tolerance of gay marriage and pot legalization. But it’s also making America’s partisan clashes more brutal.
.. As Americans have left organized religion, they haven’t stopped viewing politics as a struggle between “us” and “them.” Many have come to define us and them in even more primal and irreconcilable ways.
.. Trump trailed Ted Cruz by 15 points among Republicans who attended religious services every week. But he led Cruz by a whopping 27 points among those who did not.
.. “Many conservative, Protestant white men who are only nominally attached to a church struggle in today’s world. They have traditional aspirations but often have difficulty holding down a job, getting and staying married, and otherwise forging real and abiding ties in their community.
.. For decades, liberals have called the Christian right intolerant. When conservatives disengage from organized religion, however, they don’t become more tolerant. They become intolerant in different ways. …
.. Whatever the reason, when cultural conservatives disengage from organized religion, they tend to redraw the boundaries of identity, de-emphasizing morality and religion and emphasizing race and nation. Trump is both a beneficiary and a driver of that shift.
.. the boys in his conservative Christian high school embracing white nationalism speculates that the megachurch Christianity of these high school seniors is not facing the reality of the world around us. If true, then the pastors and other religious authorities in these kids’ lives are simply not forming them as Christians to live in the post-Christian world ..