Poisonous Words

Charles Blow at The New York Times wrote a superb column on Thursday (link here) where he said it's wrong to compare any living politician to Adolf Hitler as a person. However, he says, it's perfectly valid to contrast a current politican's strategies to some of Hitler's.

Take, for instance, lying. Hitler habitually trafficked in baroque and shameless lies. And so does Donald Trump.

Specifically, Hitler used and Trump uses what is often called "the big lie." Blow explains: "Tell a lie bigger than people think a lie can be, thereby forcing their brains to seek truth in it, or vest some faith in it, even after no proof can be found. Trump is no Hitler, but the way he has manipulated the American people with outrageous lies, stacked one on top of the other, has an eerie historical resonance. Demagogy has a fixed design."

By conscious design, Trump often couches his lies in qualifiers, like "many people tell me" or "lots of people are saying" or endless variations on the same. That way, he can pretend to be honest and only reporting what he claims is already being widely said, which of course is a lie in itself -- a lie hidden inside another lie.

Blow's piece is precisely chilling. I recommend you read and share.