Friday, May 12, 2017

How Hitler did it

The daily probes to see how little the American public cares about the Constitution have gotten occasional comment here. Not nearly all of them have been noted by RtO, but the Internet is a big place and you can find others if you care to.

Less noted, except at RtO, are the moves by Trump that parallel the administrative and governing moves that Hitler made in the early days of his chancellorship.

The most important tool Hitler had is one that America does not provide its presidents; Article 48 of theWeimar constituton allowed for rule by decree. Bruning, the Catholic Center chancellor, used Article 48 because the extremists in the Reichstag had made legislation impossible. Trump, by the way, occasionally uses theword decree. He is the onlyAmerican resident I know of who ever used the word.

However,  administratively, the most damaging move Hitler made was to appoint Goering police president of  Prussia.  Prussia was only astat, although a big one; it held almost half the German population in 1933.

In this case, the U.S. Constitution provides greater power to the chief executive. The job of police president combined, at a state level, the functions of a minister of justice and a chief of police. TheAttorney General (minister of justice) and chief of police (FBI) are national, not only state, posts.

With the appointment of Sessions and the firing of Comey, Trump is just about in the situation of Hitler -- or worse -- as regards administration of law and police power. Sessions has already reneged on his promise to the Senate to recuse himself, Rosenstein has set a record for destroying a reputation by cozying up to Trump and we will see who is put forward as chief of police.






2 comments:

  1. So far, Harry, you are missing the brown t-shirts. They played a larger role in the begin of Nazism than the official police.

    You give far too much credit for Trump in such comparisons, IMHO. He and most of his closest associates are, above all, utterly incompetent.

    ReplyDelete
  2. In my original post about parallels between Trump's administration and Hitler's (or, really, any would-be despot's) I made a point of emphasizing that Trump doesn't have a private army.

    Nor does he face 25% unemployment or some of the other crises facing Germany in 1933 or Italy in 1922. And he and his minions are incompetent.

    Still, I think his attack on American institutions, and the acquiescene his followers are showing, are worth warning against.

    ReplyDelete