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发帖数: 5309 | 1 昨天PBS的Frontline栏目提供了迄今为止电视上关于疮破和希拉里生平的最详尽调查纪
录。影片访问了疮破的代笔作家，律师，生意伙伴，娱乐记者，竞选团队成员，等等。
疮破的父亲给子女灌输的思想是疮破的家族来源于德国的优秀种族，是天然的统治者。
对于疮破的父亲Fred来讲，人生只有成败，抢到的女人是衡量成败的唯一标准。疮破生
在Queens的一栋豪宅，从小衣食无忧，但家庭教育及其严厉，要子女从小懂得弱肉强食
的道理。疮破从小就争强好斗，后来因为犯错被老爸送入纽约的军事学校。这个学校以
严格的纪律著称，古巴当年的大独裁者巴蒂斯塔是这所学校的校友。 疮破到这个学校
如鱼得水，体育水平尤其高，据说可以达到职业棒球手的水平。他在校期间以花花公子
老板哈夫纳为楷模，毕业时得到ladies' man的称号。毕业后进入沃顿商学院读书，之
后就回到他老子的公司学习房地产开发。当时Fred看中的接班人是大儿子，但这个儿子
不喜欢Fred的做人哲学，最后离开公司去当了民航飞行员。虽然在60年代飞行员是体面
的职业，但在疮破家被鄙视为公交司机。这种压力使得他最后堕落成酒鬼。疮破决心绝
不不大哥的后尘，要大干一场证明自己的实力。在老子的支持下，疮破高调进入曼哈顿
地产市场。他的成功得益于纽约臭名昭著的律师Roy Cohen。这个人是当年麦卡锡搞白
色恐怖的主要助手，主使和参与过各种对付自由派人士的卑劣勾当。麦卡锡倒台之后这
货就在纽约黑白道之间混。当年疮破公司因为拒绝租房给少数民族被起诉，疮破找了
Cohen寻求帮助。Cohen建议疮破绝不和解而是反诉。虽然最后案子以赔偿和解了解，但
疮破却认为他获得了胜利。在Cohen的帮助下，疮破搞定的纽约黑手党和建筑工会，成
功地在曼哈顿黄金地段建成他的招牌建筑疮破大厦。这个项目的负责人是个女人，因为
疮破认为女人比男人更需要证明自己的价值，所以会比男人更努力工作。疮破大厦开幕
极度奢华格调低俗，招到了曼哈顿old money的厌恶。结果35岁的疮破虽然跻身纽约富
豪，却很少有亿万富翁朋友，这也是他日后成了所谓反建制的起点。 | s******r
发帖数: 5309 | 2 凑巧NYT发表了一篇关于Ullrich的希特勒新传记的书评。在这篇书评里只字未提Trump
的名字，但如果你把作者总结的希特勒的性格特征里的希特勒换成疮破，一点都不会有
违和感。即使本人一直认为疮破是个彻头彻尾的法西斯，这样的相似依然让人不寒而栗。
• Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who “only loved himself
” — a narcissist with a taste for self-dramatization and what Mr. Ullrich
calls a “characteristic fondness for superlatives.” His manic speeches and
penchant for taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his
capacity for self-control, even his sanity. But Mr. Ullrich underscores
Hitler’s shrewdness as a politician — with a “keen eye for the strengths
and weaknesses of other people” and an ability to “instantaneously analyze
and exploit situations.”
• Hitler was known, among colleagues, for a “bottomless mendacity”
that would later be magnified by a slick propaganda machine that used the
latest technology (radio, gramophone records, film) to spread his message. A
former finance minister wrote that Hitler “was so thoroughly untruthful
that he could no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth”
and editors of one edition of “Mein Kampf” described it as a “swamp of
lies, distortions, innuendoes, half-truths and real facts.”
• Hitler was an effective orator and actor, Mr. Ullrich reminds
readers, adept at assuming various masks and feeding off the energy of his
audiences. Although he concealed his anti-Semitism beneath a “mask of
moderation” when trying to win the support of the socially liberal middle
classes, he specialized in big, theatrical rallies staged with spectacular
elements borrowed from the circus. Here, “Hitler adapted the content of his
speeches to suit the tastes of his lower-middle-class, nationalist-
conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and anti-Semitic listeners,” Mr. Ullrich
writes. He peppered his speeches with coarse phrases and put-downs of
hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing to crowds’ fears and
resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader who could restore
law and order.
• Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising
“to lead Germany to a new era of national greatness,” though he was
typically vague about his actual plans. He often harked back to a golden age
for the country, Mr. Ullrich says, the better “to paint the present day in
hues that were all the darker. Everywhere you looked now, there was only
decline and decay.”
• Hitler’s repertoire of topics, Mr. Ullrich notes, was limited, and
reading his speeches in retrospect, “it seems amazing that he attracted
larger and larger audiences” with “repeated mantralike phrases”
consisting largely of “accusations, vows of revenge and promises for the
future.” But Hitler virtually wrote the modern playbook on demagoguery,
arguing in “Mein Kampf” that propaganda must appeal to the emotions — not
the reasoning powers — of the crowd. Its “purely intellectual level,”
Hitler said, “will have to be that of the lowest mental common denominator
among the public it is desired to reach.” Because the understanding of the
masses “is feeble,” he went on, effective propaganda needed to be boiled
down to a few slogans that should be “persistently repeated until the very
last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”
• Hitler’s rise was not inevitable, in Mr. Ullrich’s opinion. There
were numerous points at which his ascent might have been derailed, he
contends; even as late as January 1933, “it would have been eminently
possible to prevent his nomination as Reich chancellor.” He benefited from
a “constellation of crises that he was able to exploit cleverly and
unscrupulously” — in addition to economic woes and unemployment, there was
an “erosion of the political center” and a growing resentment of the
elites. The unwillingness of Germany’s political parties to compromise had
contributed to a perception of government dysfunction, Mr. Ullrich suggests,
and the belief of Hitler supporters that the country needed “a man of iron
” who could shake things up. “Why not give the National Socialists a
chance?” a prominent banker said of the Nazis. “They seem pretty gutsy to
me.”
• Hitler’s ascension was aided and abetted by the naïveté of
domestic adversaries who failed to appreciate his ruthlessness and tenacity,
and by foreign statesmen who believed they could control his aggression.
Early on, revulsion at Hitler’s style and appearance, Mr. Ullrich writes,
led some critics to underestimate the man and his popularity, while others
dismissed him as a celebrity, a repellent but fascinating “evening’s
entertainment.” Politicians, for their part, suffered from the delusion
that the dominance of traditional conservatives in the cabinet would
neutralize the threat of Nazi abuse of power and “fence Hitler in.” “As
far as Hitler’s long-term wishes were concerned,” Mr. Ullrich observes, “
his conservative coalition partners believed either that he was not serious
or that they could exert a moderating influence on him. In any case, they
were severely mistaken.”
• Hitler, it became obvious, could not be tamed — he needed only five
months to consolidate absolute power after becoming chancellor. “Non-
National Socialist German states” were brought into line, Mr. Ullrich
writes, “with pressure from the party grass roots combining effectively
with pseudo-legal measures ordered by the Reich government.” Many Germans
jumped on the Nazi bandwagon not out of political conviction but in hopes of
improving their career opportunities, he argues, while fear kept others
from speaking out against the persecution of the Jews. The independent press
was banned or suppressed and books deemed “un-German” were burned. By
March 1933, Hitler had made it clear, Mr. Ullrich says, “that his
government was going to do away with all norms of separation of powers and
the rule of law.”
• Hitler had a dark, Darwinian view of the world. And he would not
only become, in Mr. Ullrich’s words, “a mouthpiece of the cultural
pessimism” growing in right-wing circles in the Weimar Republic, but also
the avatar of what Thomas Mann identified as a turning away from reason and
the fundamental principles of a civil society — namely, “liberty, equality
, education, optimism and belief in progress.” |
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