For John, BLUF: It was an indirect path to some good insights. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Last evening I was out to dinner with my wife and oldest son and my son mentioned the book he is reading, Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. My son and my wife entered into a discussion of Hitler's motivations, with my wife mentioned the book she is currently reading The Nightengale, a fictionalized version of the German occupation of France. This lead to a discussion of Vichy France and, eventually, war aims.
I made the point that part of what Herr Hitler was doing was applying what he saw as "scientific" principles, derived from the work of Charles Darwin, as expanded by his cousin, Francis Galton, in the form of Eugenics. Mr Hitler thought that Jews were eugenically inferior. Here in the United States, under the leadership of people like Ms Margaret Sanger, many of the Progressive Era considered that Blacks were inferior.♠ All of them were wrong.♥
But, that then led to a discussion of Huey P Long,♦ US Senator from Louisiana. I am not sure how we got there, but the issue was if Senator Long, the Kingfish, was a fascist. Senator Long was a supporter of President Franklin D Roosevelt, up until 1933, when Senator Long concluded that President Roosevelt had sold out the little guy. His proposal was Share Our Wealth.
The program of Democrat Huey P Long sounds a lot like the program of Senator and Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders, almost 80 years on.
As French novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr said, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".♣
Regards — Cliff
♠ The era surrounding Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-09, William Howard Taft, 1909-13, and Woodrow Wilson, 1913-21.
♥ To repeat, they were both flat out wrong.
♦ As my youngest son points out, it is always Huey P Long, with inclusion of the P. The Senator was from the South after all.
♣ "The more things change, the more they stay the same".
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