Weimar comparisons

Dr Niall Ferguson pulls rank, in his capacity as Weimar Ph.D., to explore some comparisons. He's mostly right, however where he's wrong he's wrong in the same direction.

Ferguson is foremostly wrong about his assessment of Trump's relationship with the troops. Yes, the Clinton / Bush / Obama generation of generals - the board of Theranos - hate him... to the point of dishonour. I note the Duffel Blog has hit self-satisfied America without touching the allegation itself. Out on the self-identified Right, nobody believes The Atlantic. I chalk this up to Ferguson living in the soi-disant "intellectual dark web" of free-speech signatories, on account of Ace Of Spades and Cernovich having cooties.

Ferguson further has not updated his Weimar scholarly CV to include Gerwarth, who despite his multitudinous faults does explain Weimar's strength. Germans didn't abandon democracy until the early 1930s. Through the 1920s they didn't even get to toleration of an antidemocratic Putsch as did the Russians - witness Kapp.

Not least, Ferguson poo-poos the violence in the cities. He treats the Proud Boys, the Boogaloos, and various militias as a gaggle of disorganised clowns, vigilantes, and lone-wolves. (Benjamin Ryan Teeter of the Boogaloo is, by his own description, a "left Anarchist" who blasts obscenities at Trump and has a thing for Hamas.) With one exception, Ferguson's right. One.

Now let's talk reparations, that part of Versailles which the Germans deemed the most egregious injustice. Against America - classic Americana, specifically - reparations are on the ballot in November. We've been paying them out since the 1960s in the form of "affirmative action" and the handover of major cities, but Kamala Harris and other Californians would make this more explicit. Dismanting Structural Racism, they call it. This President recognised this theory and formally pulled his government from it. Think of the issue as a rubber band being pulled back - the D ticket this year will let it spring.

We are not Weimar. Trump is not our Man On The White Horse. But Weimar is coming, and I hear the hooves.