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Current Events » in reply to I'm not buying that Hitler was brilliant at all

The Germans are an intelligent and a highly cultured people.
Mary Anne — (archived)

The German people have a long history of anti-Semitism. They are not alone in this. This cultural flaw doesn't make them into a stupid people who would follow a paperhanger over a cliff because they didn't know any better.

And almost any idiot can fire a gun, if they're taught properly. ("Almost" because of the example of the thankfully inept pair of would-be assassins who went after Gerald Ford.)

Assassination doesn't necessarily take concentrated effort over a period of years, nor does it involve rhetorical skill, persuasion, measured use of force, obfuscation, and organizational skill. Subverting a political system and either fooling or corrupting a nation involves all these.

I appreciate your opinion of politics. I disagree with it strongly.

It takes skill and intelligence to run a political campaign. It takes vision to develop a foreign or domestic policy. It takes genius to transform a society.

The objectives themselves mark a politician as good, evil, or merely opportunistic (somewhere in the middle). The skill with which they are developed and executed marks the talent of the politician.

To mark someone as an outstanding talent who sparked a social change doesn't translate to the "It Can't Happen Here" Syndrome. To recognize a person's genius in one area is not to mark him as a Renaissance Man. To see genius in all its forms and hues is to recognize that sometimes it looks like a failed art student with a destructive agenda and an unrealistic assessment of his own limits.

Thomas Edison failed at a lot of things, too.

Regards--
Mary Anne

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