Is philosophy useless?

spendi wrote,

You'll have to explain what those "secret fears and desires" are?

What Hitler's oratorical genius conjured into existence from the depths. What Osso Strasser was referring to when he said that Hitler was a "loud-speaker, proclaiming the most secret desires, the least admissible instincts, the sufferings and personal revolts of a whole nation".

The systematic manipulations of fears and hopes and cravings and anxieties and frustrations of the masses. 20 years before Madison Avenue and its motivational research which exploits the less dangerous dark forces to sell toothpaste, cars and political leaders. Using the dangerous ones Hitler sold the masses a Fuehrer, an insanity and a war.

As this is a family friendly site I will refrain from further elucidation except to say that what was exploited by Hitler was provided by the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919 and your President's capitulation to the vengeance seekers. With us it is self inflicted.

What was exploited by Hitler was their economy in shambles.

I am not so sure about that. Philosophy isn't exclusive to philosophers. There is an element of philosophy to almost everything, and sometimes old habits can be revised when someone thinks along new lines. There is even philosophy in capitalism. The belief that this system is the best way to distribute our collective wealth is perhaps a philosophical opinion.

That's true; what we considered good English language has transformed over the years to what we see today which is different than what it used to be some decades ago - especially since I was in grade school.

Philosophy is used to update ideas through language. What was considered Victorian has been superseded by contemporary understanding of different cultures. We see those changes in books and the movies.

Yes. In Norway, and probably in all countries, with the increased influence of the english language, it became a point to preserve our language and traditions. This resulted in a whole lot of new words being introduced as norwegian equivalents of words borrowed from english.
If our philosophy had been to embrace change and work towards unification of all nations, that might not have been an undertaking we deemed neccesary.

Having never read it I wouldn't know what kind of introspection it would contain - see above for clarity.

That said, Hitler was by force, placed in an environment conducive to introspection (jail) for certain types of people (in this case, the power hungry) - which isn't the norm for those kinds of people.

Who said I wanted to prove something with my post? It is the posting of a viewpoint.