What did Hitler have that Trump doesn't? By Hal M. Brown

Hitler needed two things to accomplish what he did.

These were a loyal military and the support of the majority of German citizens.

We don’t know at present how far Trump can go in his quest to turn the country into a ruthless dictatorship where his enforcers aren’t just armed federal agents, but also the active duty military.

We haven’t seen non-compliance with his orders and dictates being punished by the military in Nazi SS style.

It is possible that there is a line Trump can’t cross before enough elements of the military say either a soft “no” or a hard “no” to thwart him. A soft “no” would be telling him that there were orders they would not follow. A hard “no” would be implied with such a soft “no.”

If it came to it this would be implemented by an actual coup where Trump was formally arrested or just physically removed from the White House (having the football taken from him of course). A hard “no” would involve tanks not parading down Constitution Avenue, but turning onto the White House lawn.

Instead of Vance being installed as president the military would install temporary leaders until the country, which probably would be reeling with possibly violent pro-Trump protests, could be stabilized. At some point the military would be in charge of free elections.

What the military might do is a known unknown.

What we do know about Trump is that he does not have the majority of the country behind him the way Hitler did. This is why prognosticators are envisioning a second civil war where Americans take up arms against each other. This is another scenario which could lead to the military taking over, not on one side or the other, but to stabilize the country.

Now to the question in my title: What did Hitler have that Trump doesn't?

Hitler was 56 years old when he died. During his ascension to power he was a young man. He had youth. He had all his mental faculties intact. Not having social media to look at, I assume he wasn’t up in the wee hours of the morning obesessing over personal grudges, for example, against his predecessors Kurt von Schleicher and Paul von Hindenburg.

Trump is now 79 years old. His cognition appears to be if not impaired at least suspect.

Next year he obviously will be 80. This is a milestone birthday. It is sometimes called “The Big Eight-Oh” (I’m 81 so I know how it feels and since I live in a senior community I know how others react to being kind of offcially old just because of this number).

I thought of this just looking at the subtitle of Amanda Marcotte’s column in Salon this morning:

“The Epstein files give MAGA a post-Trump future: Even his loyal followers can see Dear Leader is getting quite old”

Here’s an excerpt with showing the highlighted portion in the article above the text:

His legs swelled so much recently that the White House even admitted the self-described “perfect physical specimen” has been diagnosed with a vein condition. But there’s also the visible general decline. Though he’s as loud-mouthed as always, Trump speaks more slowly, and his already tiny vocabulary has shrunk to the point where, in denying the provenance of a naked woman doodle he reportedly sent to his pal Epstein, Trump said, “I never wrote a picture in my life.” (This, too, is a lie.)

For MAGA influencers, the pressing knowledge that Trump won’t be around forever must be frightening. It’s not unusual for fascist movements to be incoherent in their ideology or goals. But with MAGA, it’s especially pronounced because Trump so thoroughly dominates and defines them through a cult of personality. If the movement is to survive, however, they need something other than Trump worship as a central organizing force. The best that most MAGA influencers have come up with is conspiracism. Spinning non-stop lies about secret cabals conspiring against red America keeps their audiences hooked, and it also isolates them from reality-based society. That combination of nuttiness and alienation is their best bet for continuing the MAGA cult after the leader dies or ages out of his capacity to control them.