(THOM) - Chris in Oakland California. Hey Chris what's on your mind today?
(CALLER) ~ Thom, boy Richard was really close there wasn't he? I was rooting for him.
It was right on the verge of rational credibility there.
If anything he just had to go with the false equivalency just couldn't resist.
(THOM) - Well and I and by the way I'm not sure that man said Maxine Waters.
Richard if you're still listening I tried to google this during the break and I
couldn't find any place where Maxine Waters walked back. Actually I
couldn't find her comment. I found all kinds of mostly right-wing sites
hyperventilating that Maxine Waters was encouraging people to to yell at people
in restaurants or something. I couldn't find her quote and I couldn't find where she walks.
(CALLER) ~ So running over with cars and shooting. (THOM) - There's a substantial difference. yes anyhow what's up Chris?
(CALLER) ~ I know you're very hurted man and I know you
have spoken about medical issues in the past and I'm one to get your opinion on
something. There are certain there are certain sort of diseases or afflictions
once we get that once we get them or inoculated from and and others that once
we get them we're more susceptible. Going forward when this kabuki cabal
that's going on right now ultimately fails and I believe it will I think I
think liberty and and freedom are too ingrained in our DNA and our free press
is too strong and are those our social media for him not to fail. But going
forward do you think after this we will learn a lesson we will be more
inoculated against the next Donald Trump type character that come longer do you
think that will be more susceptible? (THOM) - I think it'll be a little bit of both but
the the thing the lens through which I view this stuff Chris is that of cults
and I do that because having lived in Germany for a year and my
mentor Gottfried Muller who you know passed away at the age of 92 about a
half a decade about it maybe, I don't know, six eight years ago was in Hitler's
army. He was he parachuted early in the war parachuted into what was then
part of Iran it was the Kurdistan of Iran to help the Kurds he spoke their
language to help the Kurds get the oil for Hitler. And he was immediately
arrested by the British and the Iranians and held in a prison cell until the end
of the war for which he says thank God you know I never killed anybody.
But he told me stories about what it was like being a young man in
Hitler's Germany. A number of the people who worked with the organization the
Salem International organization at that time, they've all passed away now,
Horace von Hier was one of them. He was part of the Hitler Youth and you
know we had long conversations. Horace drunk would be into Uganda his assistant
was eaten by a crocodile in South Africa. We work together in Bogota Colombia and
and what I got from these guys was that it was a cult that. That Hitler had
created a cult not just a call to personality but a a religious cult
basically. This idea of the supremacy of the Aryan race and and you know so it
was a white nationalist cult and and the confluence of Christianity with it there
had been this archbishop bishop Archbishop Moeller who was appointed by
the state, in the in the mid 30s when basically all the other churches
were shut down. And the thing that woke people up from that cult was having the
curtain ripped back after World War two and seeing the death camps and seeing
the horrors and seeing the devastation of their country. (CALLER) ~ Made the private
citizens come and what come through and look. (THOM) - Right and and it shocked them out
of their cult following and the same thing with Japan yeah I have a good
friend who's Japanese now he's not as old as here Muller was he was born like
I was in the I was born at 51 I think he was born in 53 and and
heard the stories. And the kamikaze pilots to die for the Emperor
who was the you know the the great-grandson of the
Creator the earth itself. The Sun God was the highest thing that you
could do and and that call it got shattered when the Japanese were
defeated in war. So if if Trump is defeated in a big way and Trumpism is
defeated in a big way I think it could shatter the cult .On the other hand
and if they if they manage to kind of weasel through, it it's sort of like you
know in the in the 1920s we had a not entirely analogous situation but Teddy
Roosevelt prior to the 1920s had been a progressive Republican president and
Taft followed him and continued you know breaking up Standard Oil and all those
things in fact the final breakup handle happened during his presidency. And then
came the conservative Republicans and Harding in 1920 campaigned on dropping
the top tax rate from 75 percent down to down to 25 percent which he did when he
was elected in 1920. And on a slogan of more business and government less
government and business in other words privatized and deregulate and they did
that aggressively and it goosed the economy like nobody's business which is
why we had it called it the Roaring Twenties which by the way is the exact
same thing that's happening right now and it's set up the inevitable crash in
October of 1929. That crash was so severe and so deep and so long that it woke
people up to the Republican con game and it was three generations before the
Republicans took control the House of Representatives again. I mean they they
just wandered in the wilderness forever until in the 1970s Lewis Powell came up
with his memo and they organized all the rich people and and figured out how to
bring in the Christians and how to bring in the bigots and how'd it you know I
mean I they just basically the the gun guys the anti-abortion people they put
together this coalition. But a it's not entirely analogous but but people did
wake up from that conservative cult then it may happen again but Chris,
I'm making no major predictions here. (CALLER) ~ It's just one of my
major concerns that we get sort of an an unsatisfying lukewarm resolution to this
and that there aren't any serious consequences and it just kind of lurches
forward again and then we center. (THOM) - So the thing that concerns me the most was the
way that Bolasaro and the right took over took over Brazil as Mark Weisbrot
was telling us was they stacked the courts with a bunch of their right-wing
buddies and during the last few years of the Obama administration Mitch McConnell
refused to fill
federal judgeship's to the point that John
Roberts issued a letter to Mitch McConnell and made a public
saying that there was a judicial crisis because there were not enough judges and
the courts were all backed up and this is like a year before Obama left office
and Mitch McConnell just completely ignored it and and also you know kept
Merrick garland off the off the bench and right now he is packing the courts
and he's packing them with the kind of people who I think would support fascism
in the United States that's something that really concerns me in a big way
that if if the courts in the United States have used the same way that Bolasaro
and the right-wing used them in Brazil to imprison the goodwill left you
know - I've been literally putting the ex-president in jail and you've got
chunk chanting lock her up about Hillary Clinton you know if that happens then
then the game has turned really really dark really really evil and we're just
going to have to wait and see .
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