Why are people so affraid of anarchy?

[Thumpalumpacus]

This doesn't void my objection, firstly, because Hindenburg had been operating under emergency powers since 1930 without Reichstag reproval, and secondly, because there's a big difference between appointment and election, your protests notwithstanding.  

Your comparison is stilted at best. Hitler was appointed. Trump wasn't. Sorry. It was no democratic process that placed Hitler in power. It was the exercise of decree.

The fact that the Reichstag didn't vote "no confidence" prior to the Enabling Act which mooted even the appearance of democracy in Germany does not obviate the fact that Hitler was not emplaced by any vote. There was only six weeks between his appointment and that act, six weeks occasioned by the Reichstag being fired up and scapegoats being hunted.

Let us know when this has happened here. Until then, your comparison is overdrawn.

The difference is not a really a qualitative one. Hindenburg was elected.  Appointing hitler through article 48 was part of the authority granted him by the constitutional system under which he was elected. The constitutional system empowers the reichstag to void the appointment by a simple majority.  It did not do so.  Hitler would not have won an election outright, but he certainly would have won a sizeable plurality of votes.   It was his ability to command a plurality that recommended him for the constitutional article 48 process.

Trump too won through a constitutional mechanism, just like Hitler.   The fact that the mechanism happen to operate at the same time as an election does not make it more democratic than a mechanism that is part of the democratic framework but not part of an election, at least not if by democratic one means what it has come to mean since democracy has trumped the republic as indication of enlightened exercise of popular will. Trump won neither majority nor plurality. He won through a parallel mechanism that is republican, but not democratic in itself.

Yes, and Hitler is neither Hindenburg nor Trump. And an appointment is not an election.

Hitler was not elected. End of story.

It was his ability to command a plurality that recommended him for the constitutional article 48 process.

Not so fast -- it was more a matter of Hindenburg having run out of suitable candidates who were willing.