(Also at kos’s place….posted simultaneosly so I have time to write tonight’s episode….maybe!)
Hitler threatened a relatively small area of the planet.
The Japanese alliance with Hitler was what made it a real World War.
But still, the combined threat was just world domination and life under tyranny.
Well…..and killing off 12-15 million “undesirables” just by Hitler. With many, many more to come if he had won. Estimates say 50 million people died in WW2.
Small potatoes.
While George Bush has “only” killed about a million people in Iraq, the policy of US killing to attain hegemony over oil that caused the war is indicative of what is on our horizon.
But those future Resource Wars are probably just going to be pikers too. The REAL killer, the real threat is not fascism taking over America, it is Climate Crisis overtaking the world. The amount of people whose lives will be affected by unmitigated Climate Crisis is FAR higher than the number of lives Hitler affected. Of course the fact that the Tyrants/Fascists/Authoritarians/Republicants/Assholes are the ones preventing mitigation is where this comparison originates. Whatever these totalitarian bastards do to America…and anyone who has read my essays knows how horrifying I think that is, the real measure of their damage will be judged not by what they have done to America….but by what they are allowing to happen to the planet.
Whatever you want to call Bushco et al…(and I STILL can’t believe some people think that the debate should be over what to CALL what they are doing!)…their policies have a very good shot at overtaking Hitler as far as damage caused.
There are no good estimates on how many people that the worst case scenario of Climate Crisis will produce. Mainly because their are no real models at this point for how bad Climate Crisis will get.
There are no good estimates, in part….because it is so bad…and accelerating so quickly…that the scientists can’t keep up. If they were to reveal there worst case scenarios….believe me, it would be far more than 50 million deaths.
Water supplies are threatened, food supplies are threatened, all coastal cities are threatened….and that is just the obvious damage.
There are nearly 7 Billion people on our planet.
NO ONE knows how bad Climate Crisis will affect us….but it will not be good and could be much more destructive than Hitler at his worst. 12 million…20 million, even the full 50 million is a pretty small percentage of 7 billion. Ouch.
And all because George Bush and the 1% of the people who control most of the worlds wealth refuse to address it, refuse to do anything about it….because it would cost them money in the short term.
The problem with comparing anything or anyone else to Hitler is pretty simple. We KNOW what Hitler did….we simply cannot know what the current Ruling Class’s greed and lust for power will do in the future. The comparison is a handy rhetorical tool and that’s about it. No one could say in 1937 or so what the outcome of Hitlers policies would be with any certainty….just as we cannot say in 2007 what the outcome of Bushco and The Republicants policies will be. But if you still believe in science….it ain’t good.
So….yeah.
Compared to Bush and Republicanism in relation to the amount of damage that COULD result from their policies….
Hitler was a fucking piker.