A We to Be

I’m trying to get better at communicating in 150 words or less. I hope you’ll bear with me if I run over my limit.

A few months ago, after studying the field and content of our contemporary podcast environment, I took a nap and awoke with an epiphany that led me to research theories of argumentation. 

My research guided me to Frans H. van Eemeren’s Pragma-dialectical Theory of Argumentation, and I was impressed by the theory’s estates—philosophical, theoretical, empirical, analytical, and practical. This theory offered and clearly explained a comprehensive system of applying critical thinking to how argument works in dialogical practice.

In 2025, it’s reasonable to have forgotten that, in 2016, it was Donald Trump’s now Vice President JD Vance who wondered if Donald Trump was “America’s Hitler.” But we can set that aside. Thanks to Timothy Ryback’s multi-media work, we can look at Hitler’s record and analyze for ourselves how that measures against what Donald Trump’s administration is currently doing. 

In 2023, Timothy Ryback, the leading American historian on Adolf Hitler, was heavily featured in a documentary entitled, “The Books He Didn’t Burn.” This documentary is available to be viewed for free on Kanopy (kanopy.com) which is “an on-demand streaming video platform for public and academic libraries.” And on January 8, 2025, Ryback published an article in the Atlantic, entitled, “How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days.” This article is available for free here: https://www.yahoo.com/news/hitler-dismantled-democracy-53-days-133000255.html

Having carefully watched this documentary and read this article, I see alarming parallels that are worthy of discussion and democratic intervention. But I’m also afraid that this issue may be too far gone. As Trump’s administration argues its unconstrained power through unitary executive theory and the failsafe of absolute immunity, I fear that we all will soon learn what our constitutional guardrails failed to prevent by incessantly insisting that accountability for criminality was always some other guardrail’s responsibility. 

I, possibly like you, have no idea what to do about this. But here we are if there is a we to be. And these days, I don’t know that there is. In 1967, Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), wrote a compelling essay entitled, The Myths of Coalition. And it’s remarkable how so little has changed in the past 59 years.

That’s all I have for now. Please contact me if you have any trouble accessing the informational resources mentioned in this blog post. I would be happy to provide assistance.