Frank Rich: Only Totalitarians Compare People to Totalitarians

Of all the asinine sentences in Frank Rich's latest people-who-disagree-with-me-are-neo-Klansmen column, this one jumped out:

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn't recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht.

Kristallnacht, you will recall, was a spasm of anti-Jewish-property violence suggested, orchestrated, and largely perpetrated by the leaders and organs of a sitting federal government, run by a guy named Hitler, who had been systematically trampling on Germany's Jewish minority for years. Two hundred synagogues and more than 7,000 other Jewish properties were destroyed, and 91 Jews lost their lives. Tea Party protesters, meanwhile…wait, what?

This isn't the first time Frank Rich has pivoted from anti-totalitarian-hyperbole to totalitarian accusations in THE EXACT SAME SENTENCE; here he is from five months ago:

Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode.

Frank Rich was one of many frightened commentators name-checked in Jesse Walker's classic "Paranoid Center" piece from October.