Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Similarities: A broad groundswell of dissatisfaction with the status quo, and especially the politicians... strongman that combines nationalism, xenophobia, and a message that one's own country has been headed in the wrong direction.... And part of what has gone wrong is that the wrong people have been let in--Jews in the case of Germany, Hispanics in the case of the US. A growing sense of economic despair.... Voters who are more enthused about "teaching a lesson" than what the candidate they voted for stands for.... Related to this, a surprising willingness to tolerate crassness and a complete lack of tact and etiquette from the leader in question.... A lackadaisical disregard for the finer details and a belief in the "triumph of the will".... Hitler maxed out at 44% in the semi-free election of March 33; Trump failed to win 50% of the vote. A right-wing elite that thinks they can control the populist strongman. Here, the Republican leadership sounds awfully like former Vice Chancellor von Papen and friends.... A center-left elite that largely fails to take the threat seriously.... A great willingness to use military force to further one's ends, and not only as a last resort. A stock market that seems to like what it sees... A willingness to use infrastructure (and deficit) spending to get the economy going again. A rejection of internationalist organizations and multilateral solutions....

A willingness to visit violence on the opponent. Ok, this is a bit of a stretch. The Nazis organized street fighters, the storm troopers, who not only beat up Communists and democrats, but committed murder.... Trump did not condone anything like that, or organize systematic violence, but... those comments about Hillary Clinton's security detail do sound awfully like an invitation to political murder.

A very loose sense of economic reality....

Differences: While Trump's rhetoric against Latinos is pretty amazing, he doesn't think of them as all-powerful puppet masters controlling the US today.... Their presence is a symptom, not a cause of what he and his supporters think is a malaise. German fascism had, if anything, a more progressive image of women.... No belief in "Lebensraum"--there is no potty theory leading Trump to push for territorial expansion. A conciliatory start.... The right-wing elite in Weimar supported Hitler (in the end); in the US, they mostly opposed Trump. We'll see where the opportunists jump....

So what does it all mean? Autocracy is coming. Something somewhere between Putin and Berlusconi, if we are lucky; something worse if we are unlucky. The thing that gets me the most is the almost pathological unwillingness on the left to believe what the candidate has been saying... Hitler's program was available in print, and Donald Trump is not an empty slate that deserves "an open mind". Both have an agenda, and unbelievable, even unimaginable as they seemed just shortly before, they both mean every word.

In the face of a political elite that is fast flip-flopping to the winning side, a spineless media, and a large silent majority of people who don't give a fig about their democratic institutions, I don't put too much trust in institutions, the checks and balances of the US constitution, or civic society stopping even the worst excesses. The world in four years time will not look like a place you imagined possible 6 months ago.

This is incomplete and will be revised as my thinking evolves... but I think the most important - and troubling - analogies are a) the willingness to condone unthinkable behavior on the part of voters, b) a sense - both exhilarating and reckless - that throwing out the bums in Washington is worth any price, and c) a cult of the "big picture strongman".