Comments:
- Yep, Hitler served honorably in the German Army during World War I earning the Iron Cross First Class, one of the very few honorable things he ever did. Bringing this fact up about Hitler is akin to the sick joke, “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”.
- Considering the dreadful style of Mein Kampf I do not doubt it was mostly Hitler’s product, but he had a fair amount of help from Rudolph Hess and Bernhard Stempfle.
- Hitler had little chance to cheat on Eva Braun. He was married to her for all of two days before their suicide
- Hitler was a tyrant, Trump is not, as demonstrated by the fact that Mr. Bartlett is completely free to write any inane thing he wishes.
- Hitler started a world war, thus far Trump is noted for his avoidance of military conflict.
- In Hitler’s regime he had black garbed goons on his side.
- Hitler hated Jews. Trump is the best friend of Israel who has ever resided in the White House, Ivanka is a Jewish convert and Trump has Jewish grandkids.
- Hitler despised capitalism, Trump thrives on it.
- Hysterical mobs were supporters of Hitler.
- Hitler murdered and imprisoned his adversaries; Trump mocks them which is far more satisfying.
Who wants to hold Bruce’s beer while he hops on his motorcycle and jumps that shark?
I think the “so and so is Hitler” slur is disgraceful. Trump is not Hitler. And neither was Obama for that matter,
Bartlett’s business model since 2006 has been to market himself to Democrats (and faculty poseurs like Tyler Cowen) as the Republican truth-teller. That audience is looking for text which savages Republicans, and Bartlett is pleased to provide it. Prior to that, he had a salaried position with the National Center for Policy Analysis. He was fired when he wrote a polemical book attacking George W Bush. Bartlett presented himself as a political martyr. The director of the National Center for Policy Analysis said that Bartlett had requested relief from assigned duties at the Center to complete a book, but had concealed the nature of the book; producing polemics is not within the Center’s institutional mission. Most of the fellows of the National Center at that time had faculty positions or were retired from such positions. Policy shops commonly employ a few publicists, and, given that Bartlett did not have any scholarly chops, that was his function; producing polemics about particular politicians rather diminished his usefulness (not that he’d acknowledge that). Prior to that, he had a patronage position in Ronald Reagan’s Treasury department, and prior to that he’d had a run of years as a Congressional aide. He actually has no academic background in economics, accounting, or finance, nor any history in the business world.
Every once in a while you encounter a quondam official of a Republican administration who has decayed into a nut or a fraud. Richard Painter and Bartlett are the latter. Paul Craig Roberts, Morgan Reynolds [!], and Bruce Fein would be the former. Nowadays, you also encounter Republican (or soi-disant ‘conservative’) pundits who are shills playing with house money (David Brooks, David Frum, Conor Friedersdorf). I don’t recall seeing these sorts of thing prior to about 2004; it’s quite disconcerting.
Scott Sumner promoted the Mussolini analogy before Trump was elected. Or, he’d promote in one post and comment thread and then deny the implication of what he’d written in the next. (His signature line to his critics is ‘you really are an idiot’). This is the faculty in our time.
A liberal friend posted some Trumpisevil piece saying the White House was planning to declare the elections invalid if the Democrats won. No explanation how that would be different from Democrat behavior in 2016. The accusations of Nazi behavior from those acting like Nazis would be funnier of it was happening in someone else’s country.
If the capsule biographies of Bruce Bartlett are accurate, the man was never in the military. By some accounts, he was born on 11 October 1951. That would have given him a draft lottery number of 84, which was low enough that he would ordinarily have been called up in 1971. Has he ever offered an explanation of why he wasn’t?
Art-
it appears that he was in college the whole time, studying history. Doctorate thesis on Pearl Harbor.
And in today’s one-upping, Soros “survived Nazi occupation.”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/311261/
Doctorate thesis on Pearl Harbor.
It’s a master’s thesis.
IIRC, student deferments were discontinued at the and of 1969; if he’d had one it’d have covered one semester. As of 2006, he had no children, so he wasn’t excused from service for that reason.
/shrug
Wikipedia is a place I avoid for a reason.
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The uncles that didn’t go into the military at that time are only slightly older than he is, and avoided the draft by going to college for associate’s in something or other. (One year and three years older, I believe.)
That’s one way to describe collaboration, I guess.
Bartlett is a ninny.