Welcome to Weimar America: It’s getting restive in the beer halls. People are sick of politics as usual. They want blunt talk. They want answers.Cohen wants you to see Trump as another Hitler, a bombastic bullyboy who offers to get a people back their self-respect. The parallel is inexact. Trump is more a fast-talking salesman trying to bamboozle us into buying him as president. He paints a glowing word picture of how wonderful our lives will be with him in the White House.
Welcome to an angry nation stung by two lost wars, its politics veering to the extremes, its mood vengeful, beset by decades of stagnant real wages for most people, tempted by a strongman who would keep all Muslims out and vows to restore American greatness.
President Obama claims his strategy against Islamist jihadist terrorism, which he often sugarcoats as “violent extremism,” is working. There is little or no evidence of that.
Peggy Noonan made the Weimar comparison four months ago, and we blogged about it here. Feckless government, which we've had for several years, creates a climate in which demagogues prosper as popular disgust wells up. Several recent Supreme Court decisions have added to the widespread discontent.
