US more like apartheid South Africa than 1940s Germany?

[Angrboda]

History tells us how things DID go, not how things WILL go.

People shot up a school. Others saw that and copied them. Someone drove a car into a crowd. Others saw and copied it.

History sets precedents that others may follow. You can't unring that bell.

[Anomalocaris]

Indeed trump is showing how it is done.  

If trump is not impeached, and the Republican Party as well as the narrow demographics whose interests are the true focus of the Republican Party does not pay a horrible and sustained political price for backing trump, then trump will be but the first in a diluge of egomaniacal ignorant unscrupulous traitorous self-serving political hacks and opportunists that will take high office to ride this country all they way down to dictatorship and civil war over the next few decades for their own aggrandizement.

The US is at a cusp.   The US could either resolve to make trump a Nero,  whose reign concluded in revolt by the competent and a restoration and expansion of the state that lasted 120 years, or a Commodus, whose reign opened the way to about 50 more hacks crowed emperors in about as many years.

[Clueless Morgan]

Indeed trump is showing how it is done.  

If trump is not impeached, and the Republican Party as well as the narrow demographics whose interests are the true focus of the Republican Party does not pay a horrible and sustained political price for backing trump, then trump will be but the first in a diluge of egomaniacal ignorant unscrupulous traitorous self-serving political hacks and opportunists that will take high office to ride this country all they way down to dictatorship and civil war over the next few decades for their own aggrandizement.

If that happens and I have a recurrence then I'm not seeking medical treatment.

[Joods]

The problem is that there is some crazy shit in the White House.

Part of the problem, yes.

The fact that the republicans are just going along with this shit is very scary. Their silence speaks mounds.

[Clueless Morgan]

The fact that it took Trump agreeing with Putin over our intelligence agencies for some of them to start to speak out against him speaks volumes.

[CapnAwesome]

What a totally rediculous, stupid, inaccurate and historically offensive accusation.

Obviously whoever said this has no idea what apartheid was like. Not to mention pre-apartheid south Africa. Not to mention what Nazi Germany was like.

This is where anti Trump people totally lose me in the conversation. I'm opposed to Trump based on reality. No need to make over the top historical comparisons.

The comparison I was making, as was the twitter thread, wasn't the end result of apartheid, it was the slow boil in the lead up to apartheid: the frustration of a white working class, the apathy of the public at large, the election of an extremist political party. Just like with 1940s Germany comparisons, the comparison that is apt isn't the full blown effects of the holocaust but the way that the Nazi party infiltrated German politics, took control of the country and how they demonized the Jews.

To me, to not look at historical comparisons is to not learn from history. If a path taken in the past is being repaved now it's our responsibility to recognize the similarities of the situations and take action to prevent history from repeating itself. I would rather sound false alarms when disturbing parallels appear then sit back and wait until people have their rights taken away, are being unconstitutionally jailed or deported, or killed.

The slow boil that led to apartheid? What do you think pre-apartheid south Africa was like? It was even worse. People who make these comparisons have such a poor understanding of history.