Al Gore

And what I mean by that oblique reference is 81 years ago, the Pax Americana was established.

NATO, the United Nations, the World Bank, the WTO, all of the global institutions and arrangements that make up the rules-based order and led to the establishment

huge economic boom of the post-war years and beyond, all of that has been put at risk by Donald Trump.

Again, his mistake on the climate crisis is even more serious still.

But putting the rules-based order at risk

You know, Winston Churchill had a famous quip, I've quoted it a number of times, you probably have too, where he said, the American people will generally do the right thing after first exhausting every available alternative.

Everybody focuses on the laugh line that he put at the end of that expression, but the predicate, the first part of it, America will generally do the right thing.

That is precisely what Donald Trump has put under question.

And all of the post-war arrangements ultimately rely on the conviction of all our allies and friends and our enemies as well that America is going to do the right thing at the end of the day.

And Trump has put that in question.

Yeah, it's really something, isn't it?

And you know...

Last week, one of the greatest philosophers of the post-war era, Jürgen Habermas, died in Germany, part of the famous Frankfurt School.

And I'm bringing this up because I want to share with you a thought from Habermas's mentor, an older philosopher.

who was the founder of the Frankfurt School, they went through the Hitler years in exile and then came back.

Adorno conducted a moral autopsy of the Third Reich, and he identified what he said was the first step on the descent

into hell by Germany.

And he said it was this, they converted, and I quote, all questions of truth into questions of power.

And he went on to say they attack the very distinction between what is true and what is false.

It's ethically wrong in every way to compare anyone else to Hitler, and I certainly don't want to compare Trump to Hitler.