No, he’s an adapter. If you read the first 200 pages of Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the similarity of methodology stands out. He hasn’t done anything original. He’s studied extensively and adapted the methods into his plan

I have Shirer’s _The_Nightmare_Years_ on my shelf, but haven’t read it yet. However, Shirer’s _Berlin_Diary_ is very good. I think that was his first write-up of his and his family’s experiences.

In the right hands Berlin must be a beautiful place. I’ve read that book and seen several movies and the character of the place comes through clearly. You can even sense the pride of the Berliners and then the story gradually turns mean and full of racism and hate and violence as one would expect an American film about psychopaths could appear.

The society began to reflect the inner turmoil and madness of it’s leaders.

Here our government and perhaps gradually the nation also reflects our leaders since their hands touch so many things and the press largely relates the events of their time. What do we see except the large number of people wondering why things are going wrong while one nitwit and his cronies are in charge and go around destroying everything.

It reflects Dubya’s life of bullying, destruction and avoidance of punishment.

and all the other cr*p pulled by J Edgar and the FBI and CIA back in the ’50s adn ’60s.

Same shit, different day, same cast of players.

Did some weird Repubs also reuse Hoover’s dresses?

Today’s GOP, like Bush and Cheney personally, regard political accountability the way most corporate executives regard laws against price fixing, concerted practices and making foreign bribes. It and they are unfair, they put me at a competitive disadvantage, and I shouldn’t be held to account even if I get caught. From the Democratic leadersheep’s devotion to the FISA “amendment” legislation, they agree.

The bigger difference “press” may lie with the press. Its features today are unrecognizable from what they were in Nixon’s day, starting with that anachronistic word to describe the “news” media. The Washington Post most of all.

Chinese walls – already fragile as rice paper by the time Ed Murrow stopped reporting – no longer separate the news from any other profit-making department in the entertainment and industrial giants that own the print and broadcast media. “News gathering and reporting” may be a loss leader — Brian Williams’ Porsche and Timmeh’s Nantucket abode don’t come cheap — but only in a strict accounting sense. Its job first and foremost is to pursue corporate profits. With an anti-regulatory, pro-big business administration in office, that means supporting that administration to the hilt.

I’m just jumping in on this stale thread because the comments are so ripe for irony.

JB

-G