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2017-12-07 Home Front: Politix
Invoking the specter of Nazi Germany, Obama warns against complacency
[ChicagoBusiness.com] American democracy is fragile, and unless care is taken it could follow the path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
It’s funny — my mother, who grew up under the Nazis in Gremany and Holland, is so unworried about this possibility that she still has not registered to vote since she moved to the retirement home near me, though she used to vote religiously.
Mixed in with many softer comments, that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama last night as, in a Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago, the Chicagoan who used to be president dropped a bit of red meat to a hometown crowd that likely is a lot closer to him than the man whose name never was mentioned: President Donald Trump.

Obama's comments came after a series of playful questions from moderator and Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson‐in the great Batman vs. Superman debate, for instance, we learned Obama sides with Batman‐before she eventually asked him what he's learned as a world citizen of sorts.

One thing he's learned is that "things don't happen internationally if we don't put our shoulder to the wheel," Obama said, speaking of the U.S. "No other country has the experience and bandwidth and ideals. . . .If the U.S. doesn't do it, it's not going to happen."
...
Obama moved from that to talking about a nativist mistrust and unease that has swept around the world. He argued that such things as the speed of technical change and the uneven impact of globalization have come too quickly to be absorbed in many cultures, bringing strange new things and people to areas in which "people didn't (used to) challenge your assumptions." As a result, "nothing feels solid," he said. "Sadly, there's something in us that looks for simple answers when we're agitated."

Still, the U.S. has survived tough times before and will again, he noted, particularly mentioning the days of communist fighter Joseph McCarthy and former President Richard Nixon. But one reason the country survived is because it had a free press to ask questions, Obama added. Though he has problems with the media just like Trump has had, "what I understood was the principle that the free press was vital."

The danger is "grow(ing) complacent," Obama said. "We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly."

That's what happened in Germany in the 1930s, which despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph Hitler rose to dominate, Obama noted. "Sixty million people died. . . .So, you've got to pay attention. And vote."

Obama said his greatest "regret and disappointment" was the failure to enact tighter controls on gun possession. Though the issue resonates in far different ways with different parts of the population, "something is broke," Obama said, his own voice breaking, as he talked about 6-year-old girls shot to death at Sandy Hook, girls not too different in age from his own daughters.
But the rejection of his proposed gun laws, so beautiful in his eyes, is exactly an expression of that democracy. The vast majority of voters simply don’t buy what President Obama was selling.
Posted by Vast Right Wing Conspiracy 2017-12-07 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11139 views ]  Top

#1 Shut up Obama, you democratic Socialist NAZI.
NAZI.

The biggest piece of shit communist to take America.
NAZI.
Posted by newc 2017-12-07 00:31||   2017-12-07 00:31|| Front Page Top

#2 Constitutional lawyer turned historian. Barak Obama, a man for all seasons.
Posted by Besoeker 2017-12-07 00:31||   2017-12-07 00:31|| Front Page Top

#3 ...that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama

While I don't speak for everyone here, I don't think a single one of us think this is a jaw-dropping line from Obama. It's been his M.O. all of his adult life. The only thing that surprises me is that he waited so long to say it - I would have expected it after a few months.
Posted by Raj 2017-12-07 00:41||   2017-12-07 00:41|| Front Page Top

#4 "Sixty million people died. . . .So, you've got to pay attention. And vote."

While I'm no hard-core WWII buff, weren't Germany and Japan the major Axis powers in that war (I'll ignore the Wops for now)? It's like he's trying to lay 60 million deaths solely on Adolf Hitler.
Posted by Raj 2017-12-07 00:53||   2017-12-07 00:53|| Front Page Top

#5 Yes, Baraq, you are still relevant.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2017-12-07 02:25||   2017-12-07 02:25|| Front Page Top

#6 Always with the Freudian Projection from the Left.
Posted by Procopius2k 2017-12-07 08:52||   2017-12-07 08:52|| Front Page Top

#7 Continual tour by our Liar n'Thief.
Posted by Woodrow 2017-12-07 08:52||   2017-12-07 08:52|| Front Page Top

#8 All is work to set up a socialist dictatorship is being undone and it is making him sad.
Posted by DarthVader 2017-12-07 09:06||   2017-12-07 09:06|| Front Page Top

#9 My mother-in-law who was a Jewish teenager in Nazi-occupied Poland during WWII was worried about the similarities between the Obama admin. and Nazi Germany. Hasn't said much about the Trump admin. but I think she voted for him.
Posted by JohnQC 2017-12-07 09:23||   2017-12-07 09:23|| Front Page Top

#10 If American democracy was able to survive eight years of Baraq Obama in the White House it can't possibly be all that fragile as he suggests.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2017-12-07 11:32||   2017-12-07 11:32|| Front Page Top

#11 Yesterday's Nazis and today's national socialist left
Posted by newc 2017-12-07 13:56||   2017-12-07 13:56|| Front Page Top

#12 "things don't happen internationally if we don't put our shoulder to the wheel," ... said the community organizer as he was eating a bag of dicks
Posted by Rex Mundi 2017-12-07 20:19||   2017-12-07 20:19|| Front Page Top

02:52 Grom the Reflective
02:45 Besoeker
02:40 Besoeker
02:29 Grom the Reflective
01:30 Grom the Reflective
00:55 DarthVader
00:50 The Walking Unvaxed
00:47 NN2N1
00:26 Grom the Reflective
00:19 Anguper Hupomosing9418
00:17 Anguper Hupomosing9418
00:15 Skidmark
00:14 Skidmark
00:13 Anguper Hupomosing9418
00:11 Skidmark
00:08 Anguper Hupomosing9418









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