Never Fight a Land War in Asia: The Hitler Alarm

OK, so Bush is a doofus whose job is to put a puppy-dog face on the jackal's agenda. But those jackals — the power

brokers behind Bush — don't want to destroy America, they want to make it better. They honestly want to create an America that's better for us and better for them. Actually "better for us" is optional. Still, that's hardly cause to compare Hitler to Bush — it just looks silly.

Whether it's Saddam Hussein or George W. Bush or Richard M. Nixon or whatever public figure gets compared to Hitler, the comparison will probably never be factually accurate enough to claim that history is repeating itself. That's not the point, anyway.

The comparison is an alarm — an attempt to raise an early warning about a political situation that should be addressed before it gets out of hand. The Hitler alarm is sounded so frequently because there are so many different ways in which the events surrounding Hitler went terribly wrong.

The problem is that the Hitler Alarm can never tell you anything useful. It will either be too early to see why it's a valid alarm, or it will be too late to do anything about the problem. The Hitler alarm protects us from political disaster about as well as seismographs protect us from earthquakes.

Hitler didn't get away with anything because the German people were too stupid to notice that his political maneuvering. At each stage, people in Germany — as well as other countries, notably America — either figured it wasn't worth the cost of trying to stop him, or were convinced they had a vested interest in helping him. Sometimes they did.

Hitler figured out that a lot of people — certainly everyone he ever dealt with — couldn't care less about doing things "the right way," as long as their interests were met. He also had an intuitive grasp that people who frequently give up something they loved did so to avoid something they feared.

Many, many Germans were so afraid of terrorism, poverty, and uncertainty that they gave up their freedom, their national security, and their neighbor who ran the deli. But rule thorugh fear is neither mysterious nor is it durable. A Hitler is really made by the people who support him — the people who know where he's going and want him to get there.

Or, at least, they know where he's going next. Hitler's story is filled with examples of people who helped Hilter's ascent only to find themselves meeting an untimely end when they were no longer useful. Grim? No, those are the happy endings.

The grim endings are those of Prescott Bush, Allen Dulles, and Friedrich Flick, whose service to Hitler's regime was rewarded with long lives of wealth and status. But try not to think about that, you'll just get depressed. Shit. Now I'm depressed.

Don't despair! I've got good news!

We can build a Hitler Alarm that goes off before the New Model Hitler has already conquered Western Europe!

The main problem with the usual Hitler alarms is that they require a lot of batteries and the batteries don't last. But, more importantly, they function by looking for positive signs of Hitler. These include certain chains of historical events, characteristic behaviors, congruent ideology and funny mustaches. Invariably, a valid discovery of such a sign is too late.

The key is noticing what's missing. In this age, we're so used to it being there, that we either forget about it or it only comes to our attention in negative ways. But when it's gone, or going out, that's the alarm.

The important element is a muted background noise that should always be there like the quiet whir of a cooling fan. It's the grumbling mutter of millions of people questioning authority.

Uh, but that isn't a "muted background sound" as often as we'd like to be.

True enough. Sometimes it's annoyingly loud. Sometimes it's aggressive and frightening. Deal with it.

It only becomes grating when you are trying not to hear it. And it's never scary by itself. Look carefully, and you'll realize the fear is generated by someone convincing you to be afraid. It's just a noise, what could you possibly fear?

Don't answer that. It doesn't matter. What matters is that if the annoyance or the anxiety persist, then the trigger occurs; the Hitler Alarm goes off. The trigger is a sufficiently forceful and very specific response to the noise.

SHUT UP!

Hear it?

What do you mean? I have a right to know. You are accountable. Why? Who said? Prove it! When did that happen? Who did this? Inform the public How does this work? Where are the answers?