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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWeird and scary parallels between Trump and Kaiser Wilhelm
He called his rivals stupid nicknames. He thought he was a dealmaker. He surrounded himself with generals.
He helped usher in WWI and the destruction of Germany.
During Wilhelms reign, the upper echelons of the German government began to unravel into a free-for-all, with officials wrangling against one another. The most contradictory opinions are now urged at high and all-highest level, a German diplomat lamented. To add to the confusion, Wilhelm changed his position every five minutes. He was deeply suggestible and would defer to the last person hed spoken to or cutting hed readat least until hed spoken to the next person. It is unendurable, a foreign minister wrote, in 1894. Today one thing and tomorrow the next and after a few days something completely different. Wilhelms staff and ministers resorted to manipulation, distraction, and flattery to manage him. In order to get him to accept an idea you must act as if the idea were his, the Kaisers closest friend, Philipp zu Eulenburg, advised his colleagues, adding, Dont forget the sugar. (In Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff writes that to get Trump to take an action his White House staff has to persuade him that he had thought of it himself.)
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-happens-when-a-bad-tempered-distractible-doofus-runs-an-empire?intcid=inline_amp
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Weird and scary parallels between Trump and Kaiser Wilhelm (Original Post)
mainer
Jun 2018
OP
K&R, Wilhelm was an obvious idiot it's one of the reasons Europe was so hard on Germany
uponit7771
Jun 2018
#2
thbobby
(1,474 posts)1. Kaiser Wilhelm had crippled arm
Right, I believe. From a breech birth. He always felt inferior. trump was born with the horrible affliction of bone spurs. Alike in many ways.
uponit7771
(90,378 posts)2. K&R, Wilhelm was an obvious idiot it's one of the reasons Europe was so hard on Germany
thucythucy
(8,139 posts)3. And Mike Pence reminds me of Tsar Nicholas II.
Ultra religious and self righteous, believes God has chosen him to lead, contemptuous of other opinions, shallow intellect, little if any compassion for anyone outside of his immediate circle.
What a pair.
chowder66
(9,112 posts)4. And they had to endure 30 years of that. OMG. nt
muriel_volestrangler
(101,424 posts)5. I suggested some similarities last year
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=9097829
now it looks far closer than I realised.
now it looks far closer than I realised.