I don't think the Bush argument works at this level
Oiram said:
Hitler might have committed atrocities but I think he is no different than many other men in this world including Bush. Hitler was just more successful with his extermination techniques than others have been so he is considered evil.
I'm not sure this works. Bush was an incompetent boob. His redemption in history will be the widespread perception that he is stupid.
Not so with Hitler. Even accusations of psychopathy cannot redeem the man, as it's hard to find redemption in an indictment. Interestingly, though, the late
Hervey M. Cleckley, a pioneering American psychiatrist, noted,
Over a period of many decades psychiatrists, and sometimes other writers, have made attempts to classify prominent historical figures-rulers, military leaders, famous artists and writers-as cases of psychiatric disorder or as people showing some of the manifestations associated with various psychiatric disorders. Many professional and lay observers in recent years have commented on the sadistic and paranoid conduct and attitudes reported in Adolf Hitler and in some of the other wartime leaders in Nazi Germany. Walter Langer, the author of a fairly recent psychiatric study, arrives at the conclusion that Hitler was "probably a neurotic psychopath bordering on schizophrenia," that "he was not insane but was emotionally sick and lacked normal inhibitions against antisocial behavior." A reviewer of this study in Time feels that Hitler is presented as "a desperately unhappy man ... beset by fears, doubts, loneliness and guilt [who] spent his whole life in an unsuccessful attempt to compensate for feelings of helplessness and inferiority."
Though the term psychopath is used for Hitler in this quotation it seems to be used in a broader sense than in this volume. Hitler, despite all the unusual, unpleasant, and abnormal features reported to be characteristic of him, could not, in my opinion, be identified with the picture I am trying to present. Many people whose conduct has been permanently recorded in history are described as extremely abnormal in various ways. Good examples familiar to all include Nero and Heliogabalus, Gilles de Rais, the Countess Elizabeth Báthory and, of course, the Marquis de Sade. I cannot find in these characters a truly convincing resemblance that identifies them with the picture that emerges from the actual patients I have studied and regarded as true psychopaths.
(326-7)
To the other, I'm not sure what comfort there is to be had by telling people that greater evils have existed than the one plaguing them. "Ah, chin up, Ahmed ... at least it's not Hitler."
(
My kid has no fucking legs! he might say.
What do I care about Hitler right now?)
Tell a grieving parent that Ted Bundy was worse than the piece of shit who raped and killed their daughter. It just doesn't work that way.
I don't think W. even qualifies as a "mini-Hitler". Yes, the policies and methods of his administration raised an unsettling spectre that we have yet to banish under the new boss, but the sheer
scale of Hitler can only be exceeded by Stalin. No other monster of history and legend can compare. Not Pol Pot, not Columbus, not Milosevic or even Joseph Kony.
What Hitler did wasn't just bumbling. It wasn't just the toll of an ugly war. His political capital depended on the demonization of Jews, and the toll he exacted in blood to maintain his political wealth well crosses into the realm of insanity. He was unique to his time, and nearly any time. Bush is not so unique insofar as the toll of his adventure in Iraq is a benchmark in the degradation of an idyll. The American dream has fallen this far, and while plenty have recognized this descent for some time, what happened under Bush was a manifestation of the quiet evil that so many of our citizens have tried so hard to ignore.
Hitler's evil was a manifestation of his own corruption, and while that can reasonably be said to be to some degree a product of society, there's a difference between losing one's temper and punching a bloke a square and attempting the extermination of an entire class of people.
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Notes:
Cleckley, Hervey M. The Mask of Sanity—An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality. 1941. Fifth ed. Augusta: Emily S. Cleckley, 1988. Cassiopaea.org. Accessed June 19, 2009. http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/sanity_1.PdF
).