Faulty Analogies

If I could have a nickel for every time I've heard a specious Weimar Germany comparison, I'd be able to take my raaders out for lunch.

Brian E. Fogarty, sociology professor at (shudder) Saint Kate's, puts another nickel in the kitty in today's Strib.

Fogarty starts:

Imagine this situation: Your country has had a military setback in a war that was supposed to be over after a few months of "shock and awe."

Fogarty has just discussed nearly every war in history.

Because of that war, it has lost the goodwill and prestige of much of the international community.

Buncombe, of course. The war brought out bigotries, fears and national and ethnic self-interests that were there all along, in most cases.

The national debt has grown to staggering size. Citizens complain bitterly about the government, especially the legislative branch, for being a bunch of do-nothings working solely for themselves or for special interest groups. In fact, the political scene has pretty much lost its center -- moderates are attacked by all sides as the political discourse becomes a clamor of increasingly extreme positions.

It seems there are election campaigns going on all the time, and they are increasingly vicious. The politicians just want to argue about moral issues -- sexuality, decadent art, the crumbling family and the like -- while pragmatic matters of governance seem neglected.

Ready? Wait for it....wait...for...it...

Sound familiar? That society was Germany of the 1920s -- the ill-fated Weimar Republic. But it also describes more and more the political climate in America today.

Except for the bit about the description covering Weimar in any meaningful way, Fogarty is sort of correct.

Germans were worried about the future of their country. They suffered from all sorts of terror, as assassinations, coup attempts and crime pulled their society apart. The left blamed the right; the right blamed the left, and the political center simply dried up.

Let's aspire to some intellectual honesty here.

After World War II, the German state had been bled dry. 35% of men between 18 and 40 had been killed or wounded in the war. The economy collapsed even before the Versailles treaty - and the punitive reparations demanded by Clemenceau (whose France suffered even more grievously) and Lloyd-George further straitened the German economy.

The economy plunged into chaos (broadly speaking - there were bright spots, which the modern academy is as unaware of as they are about the truth in Iraq); Unemployment skyrocketed, as eventually did hyperinflation. Socialist legislation on the part of the national government didn't help matters much.

Desperate Germans joined extremist political parties, which organized their own private militias of unemployed veterans; each major political party had its own army, like Hamas and Hezb'allah do today; the Monarchists, Social Democrats, Socialists, Communists and various ultra-right parties had armies with rifles, machine-guns, even armored cars. They even fought pitched battles in the streets of some German cities, including an incident in which a private party army took the nation's capital.

So let's recap: Society physically gutted by war; economic catastrophe; private armies carrying the political squabbles into the streets.

Yes, Mr. Fogarty - this sounds just like America today.

To get themselves out of the mess, Germans might have demanded government that carefully mended fences with its allies and enemies;...

As, indeed, they did. The national governments of the Weimar said (to translate into modern Minnesotan), "Es freut uns für ein besseres Deutschland zu zahlen" (Happy to pay for a better Germany!). Taxes were high; so were services. The government reflected contemporary Europe's belief that a benevolent, interventionist government would help society recover from the spasm it had just suffered, and prevent the next one.

... one that judiciously hammered out compromises among the various political parties and sought the middle path.

This is the part that self-serving, selective writers like Fogarty keep missing - they tried. The various governments of the Weimar era were nothing if not well-meaning. But German society was so beaten-down, and suffered so from the contortions that any great, proud society is bound to go through when they are as completely crushed as Germany was, that good intentions weren't good enough.

By the way - does any of this sound like America yet?

Well - part of America, anyway. Maybe Fogarty has a small point buried in here somewhere.

But we know that didn't happen. In Germany of the 1920s, as now in 21st-century America, appeals to reason and prudence were no way to get votes in times of crisis. Much more effective were appeals to the anger and fear of the German people. A politician could attract more votes by criticizing the government than by praising it, and a vicious negative campaign was usually more effective than a clean one. One of the problems of democracy is that voters aren't always rational, and appeals like these could be very effective.

So let's recap; after a catastrophic defeat, the German electorate became extremist, paranoid, and prone to support extreme, even violent, means to political ends.

Who does this represent?

As usually happens in times of distress, the Germans became a people for whom resolve was valued more highly than prudence, daring more than caution, and righteousness more than discretion. In many ways, they were a people not so different from today's Americans.

Oh, they were different in every measure than mainstream Americans. Americans are wealthy beyond any rational historical comparison. Our society is settled enough that we have the moral and intellectual energy to fuss endlessly about things like flag-burning. The last two "extremist" Republicans we elected were, by any rational political measure, moderates.

But if you look out on the Daily Kos, and Democrats.com, and Democratic Underground, and listen to Air America - well, there you start seeing parallels; people who have been devastated by (political) defeat; people who view their opposition as something less than human, as criminals, as an enemy rather than a political and intellectual opponent (and please don't bother comparing Fox News or Free Republic to any of the left's netroots; Fox is plenty mainstream, and Freerepublic is the fringe in a way that Daily Kos is (ask Joe Lieberman) not.

Fogarty swerves into intellectual honesty of a sort - in paragraph 10 of 13. Sort of.

Of course, America is not 1920s Germany, and we are certainly not on the verge of a fascist state.

But...

But neither have we experienced the deep crises the Germans faced.

File this under "what if Napoleon had a B-52 at Waterloo?"

The setbacks of the Iraq/Afghan war are a far cry from the devastating loss of the First World War; we are not considered the scourge of the international community, and we don't need wheelbarrows full of money to buy a loaf of bread. But even in these relatively secure times, we have shown an alarming willingness to choose headstrong leadership over thoughtful leadership, to value security over liberty; to accept compromises to constitutional principles, and to defy the opinion of the rest of the world.

The "setbacks" of the Iraq/Afghan war have been nothing - costly as they have been - compared to some of the "Victories" of World Wars I, II and Vietnam.

How would we react if things got worse?

Like if 1,000 Americans were killed in two minutes at Pearl Harbor? Like if 900 Americans died in one day taking an island we didn't need to? Like if 5,000 Americans died taking an island half the size of Richfield?

Like if 3,000 Americans died in one hour from terrorist attacks?

If we were to lose the war in Iraq, leaving a fundamentalist regime in place; if we endured several more major terrorist attacks; if the economy collapsed; if fuel prices reached $7 per gallon -- would we cling even more fiercely to our democratic ideals? Or would we instead demand greater surveillance, more secret prisons, more arrests for "conspiracies" that amount to little more than daydreams, and more quashing of dissent?

Or would we demand rational surveillance of legitimately suspicious activity, appropriate treatment for stateless terrorists, proper handling of legitimate terrorist activities?

And precisely what dissent has been "quashed?" Please give me specifics, here.

And then go back and write something that shows you understand either Weimar or modern America.

With a "c", if you please.

Brian E. Fogarty, a sociology professor at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, is the author of "War, Peace, and the Social Order."

None of which is in the least surprising.

Posted by Mitch at July 26, 2006 08:22 AM | TrackBack