Bob Lord

I sometimes wonder, when history is not kind to a country during a particular timeframe, how aware its citizens were in the moment. For example, were Germans on the street in 1940 aware of how horrific the Nazis truly were? I know there were “good Germans,” who engaged in heroic acts to save German Jews.

But were there other decent Germans who supported the Nazis because they just didn’t grasp the depravity of the moment they were living in?

Could Americans be living through such a moment, albeit less extreme, and be unaware? [Note: I’m not comparing present day America to Nazi Germany. Germany only was used as an illustration]

I go back and forth on this, but a piece at Truthout today, On Bringing War Criminals to Justice, is disheartening, to say the least. Here are a few snippets:

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For a year or so now, I’ve been speculating about the arrival of our first trillionaire. Looks like others are joining in.

For its 25th anniversary, CNBC, over at CNBC.com, has tried to look ahead to the next 25 years in the world of finance. So, they asked whether we’d see our first trillionaire by then.

I’m trying to be objective here. I don’t want to say it’s well written simply because they quoted me SEVEN TIMES, but I really do think it was well done. Check it out: Will there be a trillionaire in the 21st century?

The author, Eric Rosenbaum, summed it up nicely here:

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The Thuckmeister’s been a bit quiet these days. He’s taking it in the teeth on at least two fronts.

First, the Common Core standards pushed by John Huppenthal, whom Thucky worships and adores, are not holding up to public scrutiny. This is not my area, I’ll readily admit, but check out this post at Salon: Common Core propaganda fails: Well-financed education “reformers” fight common sense.

Second, his other heroes, Richard Rogerson and Edward Prescott, remain in near total obscurity, while Thomas Piketty, whom ole Thuckenheimer labeled a fraud, is becoming a household name. Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is at the top of the best seller lists. It’s out of stock at Amazon.

And it’s awesome. I’m about halfway through. Piketty is only in his early 40’s, yet he’s amassed an unimaginable knowledge base. It’s not only the data he’s compiled, which even those on the right acknowledge is unprecedented. Piketty supplements and supports that data with information about life in 18th and 19th century France and Britain drawn from a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of literature. He then applies impeccable analysis and logical thinking to that information base, to give a crystal clear view of where we are and where we may be headed.

And, yes, it validates pretty much everything I’ve been saying on these pages. 

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Yes, hope springs eternal.

I’d given up on electoral politics as the antidote for what ails us as a nation. As I’ve said before, it will take a rejuvenated Occupy or similar movement to make good things happen.

But ultimately we’ll want a wave of populist political candidates for that movement to get behind. One Elizabeth Warren is not enough. We need a hundred Elizabeth Warrens.

Can a wave start with a trickle? And could the trickle inspire a grassroots movement?

I sure hope so. I’ve noticed four candidates, two national and two local, who perhaps are the sort of candidates who inspired the title of Elizabeth Warren’s soon-to-be released book, “A Fighting Chance.”

On the national front, we have Shenna Bellows running for the U.S. Senate against Susan Collins in Maine and Rick Weiland running for the open U.S. Senate seat in South Dakota.

On the local front, we have David Schapira and Lauren Kuby, both running for Tempe City Council.

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