Enjoying history, then and now

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 2^nd Amendment, has launched an assault on the 1^st 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.