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# America's Greatest Public Intellectual is a Guy Most People  have Never even Heard of
- URL: https://herr-klamm.ghost.io/americas-greatest-public-intellectual-is-a-guy-most-people-have-never-even-heard-of/
- Published: 2026-10-11T08:44:55.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-11T11:19:37.000Z
- Author: Stephen Bender

What Jews in late Weimar Germany did not grasp, well after Kristallnacht – well 417,000 did grasp it an left Gross Deutschland before September 1939 – but those who remained: that Germans were not going to have what was then too just 2% of the population so dramatically influence their culture and economy. They were beating Germans at what they thought was their own game. Sound familiar?

Today the shoe is on the other foot in the United States too. That's not exactly the way people frame it in bars and elsewhere. I don't think the United States is in 1932 yet even. However, if the Sam Altman et al inspired AI bubble crashes, as has been pointed out before, then things change, just as after the failure of Credit Anstalt in Vienna kicked off things in 1931\. People don't want to take responsibility, they want to blame someone else for their shortcomings. And, of course, if you're inclined to cherrypick, you can reach comparable conclusions, which would be an error.

The shoe is decisively on the other foot in Israel / Palestine today. No need to really go into it any further, we all know the score. It's merely to point out that 'whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you'.