"...both Trump and Hitler are complete outsiders who were elected (more or less) as head of a major nation by taking advantage of the weakness of the establishment and appealing to victims of economic change..." DK comment
While I agree that Trump is certainly outside the mainstream of the Republican Party, Hitler had become a powerful leader of a major party in Germany by the time he became Chancellor.
He was not quite a complete outsider, unless one wants also to say something like, 'Labor were complete outsiders in British politics'.
Well, they certainly were, until they came to power, by the establishment betraying itself, as I understand it. WWI helped do that for them. Lloyd George and all of that...
Although Trump and Hitler both took advantage of the weakness of the establishment here, a weak federal establishment has always been an article of faith for Americans. Lincoln and Reconstruction, however, did tarnish that shining image. We pride ourselves on gross and obvious weakness at the top.
It is a badge of honor for critics of the autocracy, despotism, of the ancien regime.
That is how despots arise, in democracies, almost by a Hegelian building and building dialectic, of gradually gathering boom and bust economic enlightenment and then utter disenchantment, eventually, of the democratic mob.
One thinks of Alcibiades and Sicily...; Bush I, Bush II, Clinton, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.; Trump, the Middle East, a new democratic demagogue's Sicily.
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