ALL THIS ATTENTION FOR LITTLE OLD ME?

Well, I certainly got under the skin of The Tattler this time. And believe me, it isn't easy finding a vein in that desiccated, smack-scorched arm. I even rated Shakespeare-caliber invective and double-plus font size. You hardly expect a dried up old wretch like The Tattler to rouse itself for such a tirade. As for the "sister publication" comment, well, we here at the Rattler do what we can for the less fortunate. Admittedly, we did parody the name, but hell, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The name, we take. The ignorance and the stench, you can keep.

Some little-used, rust-tinged synaptic cleft must have been momentarily flooded with snaps of spark flare and chemical jobbers, because The Tattler, ancient monolith that he is, was moved to expell the full measure of his knowledge of Adolf Hitler. Behold, this droplet from the mighty thimblefull:

Hitler was indeed a socialist...Karl Marx was the socialist, his desire being a classless society...Hitler began as a socialist, even kidnapping the Socialist Party and changing it's name, but he eventually became an extreme capitalist...Hitler wanted and believed he could give the country back to the people...Hitler went on to become a dictator...

These are the very words of The Tattler, and yet he thinks he's made some kind of counterpunch in the debate. This isn't as though The Tattler was in a prize fight with Mike Tyson, and punched himself in his own face. This is him takiing off his gloves and injecting yourself with Potassium Chloride. The whole thrust of my argument was that Hitler called himself a socialist, but lost the plot and became an authoritarian dictator. And Tattler agrees. The fight is over, call the coroner.

The problem here is The Tattler seeming inability to comprehend words in the english language. His grasp of phrases and clauses, I'll leave to other researchers to delve into. How is it even possible for The Tattler to hold these contradictory thoughts in his shrivelled head? "Hitler was a socialist...wanted to help the people..." and "Hitler was a dictator and extreme capitalist." Let's try to bring a little clarity here. Hitler may have begun as a socialist in name, but once he acquired power, he turned to state-glorifying fascism. Russian Communism, too, fell prey to centralized dictatorial control. Which is why, when you talk about "socialism" today, you mean the "proletariat army owns the means of production" ideal, and when you say "communism" you mean socialist ideals collapsed into dictatorial control.

Let me shine a little light into the center arena of this debate, because both the original stooges who promulgated this argument, and the grizzled zombie Tattler have a hidden motive when they call Hitler a socialist. One of the silliest canards of the modern conservative movement is that liberals are all "socialists." They of course try to include all of the facets of "Social Democracy" in this category, including such horrid systems as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and whatever "socialized medicine" programs exist that provide better per capita healthcare to citizens of all other industrialized nations. Whew. That's a long argument. Suffice it to say that when conservatives call you a socialist, they are blasting you with the worst curse word they have in their arsenal. And, in much the same way as The Tattler wheezes that comparing Bush to Hitler is a dirty smear, so too are conservatives trying to clamp the ball and chain of Hitler-as-socialist to the legs of liberals.

Sorry, Tattler, if you think it's bullshit when liberals do it, you shouldn't be aiding and abetting conservative smearing either. But I doubt in your century-plus on this earth you've learned anything about either ethical or intellectual consistency.

JC

UPDATE - A hat tip goes out to MrArchieBunker, who noticed an oddly reverential, and dare I say it, infatuated tone when The Tattler waxed poetic about Adolf Hitler. "Hitler was voted into power by 90 % of the German people, because they believed he fought for the workers," Tatty swooned. And yet, according to this essay, which cites Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for its history, Hitler in fact never received more than 37% of any popular vote, and gained his power through backroom shenanigans and threats of violence (including exploiting the Reichstag fire to solidify his power). As to what would motivate The Tattler to inflate and aggrandize Hitler, well, I think wild speculation would be irresponsible, don't you?