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https://theconversation.com/regime-change-might-be-2026s-nonfiction-bestseller-heres-why-its-essential-chilling-reading-288382>
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Review: Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump –
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (Simon & Schuster)
Not long after the second world war, the Jewish, German-born political
philosopher Leo Strauss coined the term reductio ad Hitlerum. It suggests that
simply comparing something to Adolf Hitler does not inevitably taint it with
the Nazi dictator’s terrible crimes. Hitler was a vegetarian, but that doesn’t
make all vegetarians bad people.
When the internet arrived several decades later, attorney Mike Godwin updated
Strauss. “As an online discussion grows longer,” he said, “the probability of a
comparison involving Nazis or Hitler” increases.
These days, few are willing to compare anyone or anything to Hitler, for fear
of invalidating their argument. This can have the effect of closing off
comparisons that could be illuminating.
Nowhere is this more strikingly illustrated than in the closing scene of
Regime Change – Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s excellent, glowingly
reviewed book about the first year of the second Trump administration – in
which the authors finally gain an interview with the president to fact-check
the damning material they have gathered.
Haberman has been reporting on Trump since his New York property developer
days, and Swan has covered both his presidencies. The
New York Times
journalists knew from experience that Trump had two main modes of dealing with
journalists: silk-smooth salesman’s patter and outright bullying.
Days before their interview, Trump had unloaded on Haberman via his Truth
Social site in personal terms, threatening to add her to his latest lawsuit
against the newspaper.
When they met at the Oval Office on March 16 this year, 17 days into Trump’s
ill-conceived, unlawful war on Iran, the president wanted to talk about the
maple trees he was ordering for the White House, as part of the large-scale
renovations that were under legal challenge. He wanted to talk about the 339
billion views of Trump TikToks: “That’s some number, huh?”
And he wanted to let them know that, in a historian’s view, he is “without
question, the most powerful man that the planet has ever known – by a long
way.” More powerful, in the historian’s assessment, than Alexander the Great,
the Caesars, William the Conqueror, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Tamerlane,
Mao, Stalin – and, yes, Hitler."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
