Looking through an expert's prism on US. - Germany parallels

Hugh Trevor-Roper

Carol Forsloff - Trevor Roper, the British historian of Adolph Hitler, spoke at the University of Washington of parallels between Germany and the United States and the risks from their histories that mirror news today.

It was a different time, when Roper spoke.  It was early 1965.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed.  John F. Kennedy's death, howeverfresh, had been absorbed, the grief had passed, the country had moved on.  It was a time of optimism mostly, with a belief in the power to change and with a relatively new President Johnson promising to eradicate poverty and racism along with it.  Women gained new opportunities. American looked ahead.  The War in Vietnam was debated, but the country believed it would be over in time and folks would carry on.

These days the conflicts in the press reveal great political divisions,
issues so greatly espoused that it is debated by experts whether people
will even read or listen to another view.

It is a time when the President of the United States Barack Obama has been compared to Hitler; some associate Hitler with the last President of the United States,George Bush,  by those whose agendas are different and who may or may not understand the specifics of German and American history as Roper knew so well.

And the fear for the future, if all things happened in the right way, according to Roper, was from the right, with the values that reflect where that place is on today's spectrum of political and social concerrns.

Roper was considered the foremost authority on the life of Adolph
Hitler at the time he spoke at the University of Washington, as he had tracked the rise and fall of the dictator in the context of Germany and the history of the world.  He knew beyond the superficial the risks that had occurred in Germany and what America could face without its people using reason and commitment to rise above the foolish and the vain.  He was an admirer of the works of Locke and Rousseau.

In the context of his work,Roper is considered to be by his  peers to be right of center on his political views,significantly anti-Communist at the time of his flowering as a historian, and someone who brought to bear a broad spectrum from the social sciences to support his views.  He was not without controversy
either, having at one time authenticated the Hitler diaries and then withdrew his support.  But his knowledge of Hitler's last days has been accepted by others as substantial enough for realistic discussion, as he is considered an authoritative source of that period.

At the time of Roper's presentation at the University of Washington,  a
reporter was yet somewhat a girl, naively, blithely believing in the best.  As years have passed the reporter has turned gray, the words, the message fresh as it was heard.

Roper said this, as I paraphrased it in notes at the time, as he made the parallels about the United States and Germany and whether America could experience the trauma of Germany and the dissolution of its democratic ways.

"Germany and the United States were both expanded through violence,
through the submission of minorities to the will of the richer and more
powerful groups, " Roper said, outlining his first comparison.  "Both
worship the gun and uniforms.  Both have had a history of admiration and
glorification of war and the military.  Both are democratic countries,
with highly literate populations and Christian majorities.  Both believe
they are superior to others."

What might happen that could catapult the United States into a cauldron
where untruths could surface, where idle stories would become
pronounced, where liberty would become license and lies transformed to
false realities while people marched along?  Roper was asked by that
young journalist, who stood and trembled with the question from the
floor.

This is what Roper said, in words that journalist remembers, on pieces of paper scratched and soiled and barely readable now.

"It would take a time of great strife, an economic devastation not
unlike Germany had before World War II,"  Roper explained.   His words
are paraphrased as these:   "From that problem people could become
chaotic and fix on leaders, empty promises and lose trust.  They would
respond to slogans, paranoia, parades that could grow to mobs."


Roper's warning recalled from those decades when America held such
promise for its young, is brought forward as context for the news today.  ISIS is the terror of the moment, as the Republicans have now gained control of both houses of Congress as well as dominance of the Supreme Court.  

The election of 2016 will determine whether all the elements of Roper's conditions are met and if indeed the United States could face a right-wing thrust that would make it the inheritor of the type of mantle it once fought valiantly against.

Failure to act responsibily part of present weather emergencies

[caption id="attachment_6561" align="alignleft" width="401"] Storm of the century[/caption]

Editor — While many people around the world are focusing on the great storm beginning to hit the Northeastern part of the United States, the really big news is that the major news networks have not done enough to highlight the root causes. In a world where every fact must have an opposite, it seems, as opinion often rules the news, what is that major news?

Vanessa Kritzer, who is Online Campaigns Manager for the League of Conservation Voters, spells out her frustration in a recent press release, underlining the importance of looking at the root causes of our weather conditions. It is that focus that might make the real difference, she explains as she declares:

From record-breaking heat waves and massive wildfires to historic droughts and Superstorm Sandy, we’ve seen with our own eyes the increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events this past year.

Yet in reporting on these disastrous events, the nightly news programs at the major broadcast networks have largely ignored what is fueling this extreme weather – climate change.

As the effects of climate change cause hardship for families across America, we need better coverage if we want people to connect the dots and demand real action to curb global warming and pollution.

In fact, that's why the organization is circulating a petition for viewers to demand that mainstream media take responsibility and let people know what is happening in the environment at the heart of these disastrous weather events. They are asking that other networks emulate PBS Newshour in its coverage of climate change.

CNN.com today is relating the sequence of details of the present storm, accenting the specific conditions, and letting people know that the same region hit by Hurricane Sandy is getting hit again.  But why is that true and what is the evidence this may continue?

SFGate writes it frankly by observing what many scientists are saying about the future. "Within the lifetimes of today's children, scientists say, the climate could reach a state unknown in civilization."  This phrase alone tells us that there are dangers ahead that will only increase. It also is a reminder of the need to act regarding CO2 emissions. This information comes from the leading scientists, not the off-the-block ones tied to political interests, as is observed in scientific publications and those journals who are focusing on the science as opposed to the miscellaneous political debates.

We should be reminded that in 2006 it was widely noted that then President George W. Bush was denying human-induced climate change. The infusion of politics in the science that many maintain is critical to understand so that people can act responsibility meant delays in that action.

The chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Sir John Lawton, the chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in 2005 called climate change deniers in the US "loonies", observing how global warming "is to blame for the increasingly strong hurricanes being spawned in the Atlantic."

In other words, by calling the science opinion, and therefore debatable, has made the situation worse. That's the biggest headline today: how the world failed to act and that the Northeastern part of the United States, and other places, will surely feel the impact of that failure, according to the scientists, who years ago warned of the crisis.