The Final Solution: A Comparison Between Trump and Hitler

Are there similarities to Germany before the Second World War and the United States today? Certainly, the primary similarity is the abrogation of constitutional and democratic principles. And naturally there are similarities in the demographics, a large population of disaffected and disenfranchised workers (a "lumpenproletariat") who simply don’t care about principles like "inalienable rights" and "due process" which they look at as the language of an elite, a “swamp” which uses lots of pretty words and phrases to perpetuate its own power. The Versailles Treaty crippled Germany and created the mass discontent which was a fertile ground for the rise of fascism. It’s unclear what the correlation would be to America today. Perhaps the loss of jobs due to automation and technology? Donald Trump doesn’t look like Hitler. He's blond and doesn’t sport a mustache. He's large while Hitler and his Italian counterpart Mussolini were small. However, he harangues crowds in a similar way and he plays to discontent by pillorying his enemies. Statesmanship and presidential behavior are turned on their heads. Respectful discourse is treated as a lie with opponents being labeled with increasingly vile soubriquets., “Sleepy Joe,” “Crazy Bernie,” "Pocahontas,"  "Crooked Hillary.” Even though Trump’s a self-proclaimed billionaire, he's also makes himself one with his following by openly flouting the whole system including the method by which votes are cast and tallied, in order to disenfranchise the election process before it's started. The hell with ballots or voting or viruses. Trump like his predecessor in Weimar Germany has a messianic appeal in which the weight of truth is placed on oratory itself. He can say that hydroxychloroquine works or that one of the problems in the statistics of the current pandemic is simply too much testing and the words carry a magic that “trumps” scientific fact. Fascism is a juggernaut in which a tsunami of disaffection becomes the fuel for a charismatic speaker.