In a few years public opinion and the law were enslaved.
This was the period when Goering said to Schacht, the Minister of Finance, “And
I tell you that, when the Fuehrer wishes it, two and two make five.” When,
despite all precautions, the most alarming rumors were current in Germany of
the atrocities suffered by the unfortunates who fell into the clutches of the
Gestapo, those whose consciences rebelled and who expressed their indignation
were neutralized by invoking “the patriotic duty of silence.” According to the Nazi criteria, it was not
the torturer and the murderer who caused their country irrevocable harm; on the
contrary, those who denounced them must be considered as traitors and chastised
as such. This theory was affirmed at the commencement of the Nazi military operations
in 1938. To speak was to rise up against the sadist and the criminals; it was
to supply the enemy with propaganda weapons against Germany.
These arguments were accepted with relief by the “good
citizens“, who asked nothing better than to be left in ignorance. As Gisevius
wrote, “Millions of Germans played hide and seek with themselves, or at least
feigned ignorance, and it was extraordinarily difficult to touch them because
the ignorance they affected was genuine. For they never took the trouble to
seek further information! As loyal citizens they were content to know what they
were officially intended to know.”
As for those whom some fortuitous event roused in spite of
themselves from this passivity, they were content to deplore the excesses
committed by irresponsible subordinates. “Ah, if only Hitler knew!” was
doubtless the exclamation most often heard during those years. The poor
Fuehrer! Lost in his cloud, wrestling with colossal difficulties, struggling
for the good of the people, and unaware of the abuses and horrors committed in
his name! He would undoubtedly have dealt seriously with them had he known. But
it was impossible to warn him.
--Excerpted from the book, “The Gestapo”, by Jacques Delarue
I’m reading this book right now. It’s rather long and
involved, but in a perverse and terrifying manner it is enlightening. Not
purely by coincidence, I’m also reading Mein Kampf, the autobiography written
by that always sassy and entertaining dude, Adolph Hitler. All my life I’ve studied
the consequences of this guy’s thinking, but I had yet to actually get the
version of the story from his perspective. I considered reading this book many
decades ago, didn’t, but I should have. I recommend these two books to you, but
bring your barf bag.
Ya can’t help but come away with a few conclusions as you
read Adolph’s take on his life and the world that shaped it. The dude was not
stupid. A bit self-absorbed, but you expect that from folks who write their
life story when they haven’t yet done anything with that life. They live inside
that head of theirs, and the mirror shows them the importance of that person.
They worry about that person, and figure all of the rest of us should, too.
Inevitably, they worry about no one else but that person in the mirror.
Oh sure, Adolph was concerned about the Fatherland and his
fellow countrymen, but only as a reflection of his membership in said
fraternity. In contrast, he hated with a mad passion any other person or gather
of persons who were not a part of his little group of select people. He hated
them because they did things differently, or worse as he would put it, but also
because in his mind those other persons were lined up to do harm to his group
of people. It was all their fault.
To give you some idea of how well Adolf thought of himself,
it’s taking him some 460 pages of his book to say what that last paragraph
summed up in about 75 words.
But, I’m learning from these two books. I’m learning about
propaganda, for instance. Adolph had serious opinions about propaganda.
Somehow, I’d arrived at adulthood thinking that propaganda
was a bad thing. I thought only the bad guys used propaganda, for they had to
sell a bad idea to folks who’d rather follow a good. So it was interesting to
get Adolph’s take on it.
Adolph was a soldier during WWI, and he witnessed the ebb
and flow of war, and the ebb and flow of the interest soldiers and civilians
had in their war. He watched propaganda used by both sides in that conflict,
and lamented that his side did a poorer job of encouraging folks to enjoy the
war than the other side did. He thought it cost them the war. And he came out
with an endorsement for effective propaganda, and of course later saw to it
that his subjects got nothing but his version of their reality.
I watched the ebb and flow of propaganda during the Vietnam
War. My government had their version, flawed as it was, and the anti-war folks
had theirs. And of course, later I found that much of the anti-war propaganda
came from our enemies in that war, and low and behold, it was largely
responsible for the shaping of public opinion that eventually brought about the
unfortunate conclusion to that war that favored our enemies. If this really
pissed me off, I suppose I could have written my own Mein Kampf.
Mostly I learned that just about anything I hear, pro and
con about any issue that has ever popped up, will be some form or other of
propaganda. But most folks still don’t admit that it’s propaganda. Adolph
consistently stated in his book that this was his intent to utilize propaganda
effectively. I’ll give him props for that honesty.
Politicians today rarely admit that most of what they say is
propaganda, so it was refreshing, and yet alarming, when Eric Holder, the once
inconsequential functionary in the democrat party, came right out and said, in
1994 I believe, that we needed better propaganda to convince the American
people that they really wanted to be disarmed by their government. Now that he
is the Attorney General, he is still spewing propaganda, but he doesn’t any
longer admit to this. He is still ardently trying to disarm the American
people, and he will use any lie available to promote his boss’s agenda to this
end. And his list of dirty tricks is growing. One has to wonder if he is
looking for a Reichstadt to burn. For if he was willing to provide firearms to
criminals in an attempt to make American gun owners appear to be criminal, what
else might he try? He is actively assuming the irresponsible subordinate role
once played by folks like Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering in another
administration.
The democrat party has promoted placing the government in
charge of everything since around the same time Adolph imposed this same notion
on the German people. And the party has also been actively promoting the
disarmament of the American people since those days. You cannot really have one
without the other. Adolph understood that, and he implemented it without any of
the usual constraint. It’s taken the democrat party a long time to get a man in
the White House this obsessed with making disarmament the law of the land.
The democrat party hired some folks who composed a kinder, gentler
propaganda for the American people, a product they called libertarian
paternalism. These folks wrote the script whereby the party politicians, all in
unison, are trying to sell us on our new way of thinking.
In libertarian paternalism, the government doesn’t order you
to do something, but it gently shades its arguments so that you find it easier
to do things that they tell you are in your best interest. This is generally a
bunch of lies, but it’s nice lies packaged to lead you into thinking it was all
your idea in the first place. It is clever propaganda, and it is working very
well.
For instance, Americans may have the best health care in the
world, but have you watched as the party convinced you that our system is too
flawed to continue? Now watch how they deliberately destroy what we once had in
order to put the government in charge of it all.
Watch also how they teach us that small businesses and
profitable larger businesses are the enemy of the common man, only so the party
can rescue us from them with…..benevolent government control.
Crime, including violent crime, may be on the decline most
all over the nation, but the party is united in telling folks that crime is
raging far worse. The terms their politicians and their publicists in the media
have been instructed to use involve things like ”rising tide of violence”,
“epidemic of school shootings”, and “common sense restrictions”. With crime
rampaging this badly, of course we will all realize we need more gun control.
Each attack on a different class of firearms is preceded by a campaign of
demonization designed to make folks tremble at the mention of these guns. All
lies, but lies repeated endlessly, by party politicians and their supporters in
the media, all intended to change public opinion, with the goal of eventually
disarming the public.
After hearing this litany for years, it is small wonder that
in the party bastions such as California, people thus indoctrinated, people who
ask nothing other than to be left in ignorance, (with what they are officially
intended to know), would gladly discard our Bill of Rights for some relief from
this intimated carnage.
An armed citizenry consistently limits crime. But you won’t
hear this from the party. Firearms ownership and the morals and mentality that
are an integral part of this, are one of the main impediments to government
control over everything, so the party must impose an end to this right. If the
party can dismember the Second Amendment, then the rest of the Bill of Rights
falls easily. If that means selling disarmament through a litany of lies, or
worse yet by encouraging more crime and violence by removing the consequences
of criminal behavior, so that politicians can then cry out for more
restrictions on the non-criminal citizens….well that’s how you sell it to the
masses.
The party needed to change some things to try to reach their
goal. As a consequence, we are now living in a time where proper behaviors are
often discouraged and punished, and the consequences of bad behaviors are
removed. Self-defense is now called immoral, but when the party releases
thousands of criminals from prison to prey upon the land and the innocent
people, that becomes a good thing. To what end, you might ask? Well, if we
cannot control ourselves, guess who the party would suggest take over the task.
The senator from California, firmly entrenched in the ruling
elite, in a brief excursion from her unrelenting attacks on the 2nd
Amendment, has launched an assault on the 1st amendment too, hoping
to drive away the large array of folks on the internet who persistently oppose
the party version of government rule over all. Such folks consistently poke
large holes through the propaganda spewed by the party. The Nazis would never
allow such impertinence, and the senator sees no reason why she should either.
Each passing day reminds me of the many parallels between
the rise of the Nazi party in Germany in the thirties, and our current
situation. The Nazis had strict rules against any criticism of their rule,
right down to the suppression of comedic comment about the party or its
leaders. Imagine how they would have reacted to a rodeo clown wearing a facemask
mimicking Adolf. You will notice that the party isn’t standing by, letting such
go unpunished, as we speak.
The Nazis always called such critics traitors. Now, they are
attacked as racist.
Although the party encouraged and supported the rabble of
Occupy protestors when they were useful in harassing the opposition to the
party, they now wish to limit any protest by any groups if their target is the
party or its leaders. So now they bring down the weight of government on those
miscreants.
Then there’s the NSA, busily gathering intelligence against
the average citizen. Ah, so like the Gestapo.
And now the party is building vast paramilitary militias
that support their rule. Homeland Security has acquired thousands of
semiautomatic rifles, and many millions of rounds of ammunition, for use
against who? Paramilitary militia became the SS in Germany in the thirties. And
now we head in that direction.
I’m looking forward to reading our president’s first book. I
understand that it is about the man’s experiences and developing mental state,
written by a youth who had yet to do anything with his life. He has great
ambition. And the dude is not stupid, but yeah he is a bit self-absorbed.
Presumably, that mirror comes into play, along with his admiration for that face
in the mirror. No doubt there will be a list of person or persons who he feels
did things to harm him and his select group of people. And he won’t much like
those persons. No doubt, if there was bad happening, it was all their fault.
But I will still read his book. For it is clear where this
all is headed.
It helps to know and understand my enemy. For he certainly
will know and understand his.
