James Howard Kunstler: Enter Hitler, Release 2.0

05-31-2011 • Kunstler.com

So, the Sarah Palin campaign - and, make no mistake (I love that phrase!) it is a campaign - trafficks in code and buzzwords about the shame of being losers. Her bus tour rolls heavy under the rubric: "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Recognize those phrases? They are from the national oath that we are all trained to recite in the first grade. Most of Sarah Palin's followers got through the first grade - and are proud of it. The phrase that really rings out, though, is "justice for all." For a nation of tattooed, hopelessly fat, angry people without jobs or incomes, filled with shame, this phrase resonates. How come no justice for us? Hitler was more direct. From his emergence out of obscurity in the early 1920s, he made no bones about how come there was no justice for his followers: because it was stolen by the Jews, along with their honor and their greatness. Sarah Palin may never get as explicit, at least not without igniting some kind of new Civil War in the USA. So the bad feelings her followers nourish about being swindled out of their livelihoods and their honor are liable to be expressed indirectly and perversely. One avenue is the idea of "American Exceptionalism" that Palin is retailing to her followers. It is not unlike Hitler's idea that Germans were a "master race" who were different (exceptional) from other people (and ought to rule them). I prefer to be direct. Sarah Palin represents a dangerous force in American culture that is startlingly similar to the grandiose hyper-patriotic militarism that Hitler brought to Germany...