Is Paris Burning?
Something remarkable happened last week. Charges were dismissed against a former Olympian for vandalizing the reflecting pool. Anyone who looked at the story knew the charges were false. Indeed, they were so patently false that anyone who sincerely believed them would have to be regarded as a dim besotted delusional
The really remarkable thing, however, is that the dismissal document basically admitted that. It pegged the source of the reflecting pool problem as what it is, a bad Rhino Lining job. That's stunning.
And what's more stunning is that, after a couple of days, Trump was complaining about the charges being dismissed.
That might mean we've reached an "Is Paris burning?" moment.
On August 1, 1944 Dietrich Hugo Hermann von Choltitz was appointed as the military Governor of Paris.1 The appointment came two months after the Allies had landed at Normandy and mere days before the Allies landed in Southern France. Already it was obvious to astute German commanders and the gig was up. Indeed, just two weeks prior some of them had attempted to blow Hitler off the face of the Earth so that they could affect a coup and work towards a negotiated settlement of the war.
On the same day, August 15, that the Allies landed in southern France, the French police in Paris went on strike. On August 19 the city erupted in a general insurrection. On August 23 Hitler ordered that the city be completely destroyed before it fell into Allied hands.
Von Choltitz didn't do it.
In fact, he stayed in Paris and surrendered.
Stalingrad had been retaken by the Red Army in February.
The purpose of the annual gathering was like any nostalgic event, even though it celebrated events that weren't really all that far in the past. Hitler's speech on that occasion was fiery. He'd never be back. Nazi Germany's end was approaching pretty quickly, even if at that point the public didn't realize it. Some in the German military already did, however, and were actively looking for a way to put an end to the regime.
This past week Trump's Alter Kämpfer in Congress, now a diminished set, gathered in true Nazi style to berate Dr. Anthony Fauci. Many outsiders have been baffled. They should not have been. The Nazis have gathered to relish their past and to remind themselves of their hatred of the Jews, or, in contemporary terms, to gathering around one of their great myths, COVID was a fib and Anthony Fauci is a monster.
The public large reacted with, eh?
Frankly, Rand Paul shot the last bolt of credibility he had left, having gained some during the descent of Thomas Massie, who dared to take on the Epstein files. Now that's gone. But he's not the only one.
Still, you can see the Alter Kämpfer rally one last time around around the Blutfahne. In spite of it all, the seas of dead, see they were right all along. . . except they weren't. But that hasn't stopped such figures as Ken Pendergraft from coming out, in his case, to say see, we weren't "knuckleheads".
No, you were anti scientific ignoramuses and we all know it.
This same spirit is part of the reason that all of a sudden Reichsgesundheitsführer Kennedy has been fully released. Kennedy is a complete nutcase and a quack. For the most part, the Administration has kept him under a lid so he couldn't be too destructive. But now, like Stephen Miller, he's been loosed as there's nothing left to lose and maybe the deluded can be deluded again.
Kennedy is back out there unleashed making statements against vaccinations. Over the weekend he said that Lyme disease and came from gain-of-function research, stating:
Lyme disease almost certainly came from these experiments and is now devastating our country.
That's idiotic.
The 5,300 mummified body of Ötzi the Iceman contained the bacteria that causes Lymes disease. Genomic tracking can trace the disease back 60,000 years.
Genetic tracking of RSV shows a common ancestor between human RSV and bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) to have existed 921 years ago. 338 years ago is the point at which human RSV-A and RSV-B split from their shared ancestor. That would make it a newish disease, compared to Lymes anyhow, but it's not a result of "gain of function research". It's a result of agriculture.
Das Ende
As we progress towards the fall election, and on into next year, we can look for these trends to accelerate. Der Fibber, just like Der Fuhrer, has an accelerating mental health collapse. That is making him more and more erratic. His policies are failing and he will lash out as they continue to fail. A war he was supposed to easily win is being handily lost and dragging on. Heads will roll.
But disloyalty will now increase. Already some out in the field are openly disobeying Der Fibber and no longer working towards Der Fuhrer. At the end, in 1945, even Himmler was looking for a way to betray Hitler and cut a deal of his own. We can bet that Vance and Rubio contemplate such a means out every day, and probably every hour of every day. Traditionally, in a lame duck term, cabinet ministers begin to flee as soon as the midterm results are in. In this administration, that will happen in spakes as people hoping for a political or administrative future look for a way to surrender, and to distance themselves (with tell all books) from Trump.
The true believes, of course, people like Stephen Miller, will remain, and their influence will accordingly grow. The next two and half years are going to be chaos.
January to May 1945 were the bloodiest months of the war in Europe.
Fußnoten
1. I've generally tried to avoid comparing the Trumpites and Trump's administration to the Nazis, but frankly it's impossible not to do so now.
I had originally avoided calling the administration fascist, but it is. It has all the classic features of fascism and it's perfectly comparable to fascism in early fascist Italy while democracy was still liming along a bit. That's right where we are at. The question is whether we descend further into it, or pull out. Right now, it looks like we might actually be able to pull out.
It's often debated if Nazism is fascism or sui generis. It certainly has fascist elements at a large scale. What really distinguishes it is the degree that Nazism was autarkic where as fascism favored state capitalism. Strong elements of both are present in the Trump administration's economic policies.
The other defining characteristic of Nazism that was lacking in fascism was the absolute racial hatred that was a feature of Nazism. Both it and fascism are extremely nationalistic, but fascism doesn't really feature racial hatred to anywhere near the same degree as Nazism. Racial hatred has been an increasing element of Trumpism as time has gone by and it has members who outright advocate for making the United States a white Protestant nation.
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