My father, the Catholic nuns, and Nazis - Chicago, 1961 [View all]

[truedelphi]

A long time ago, in Chicago, circa early 1960's, a forty something dad explained something important to his nine year old daughter.

At the usual time, and usual place, she had waited like she often did, for his commuter train to arrive. When he finally got off the train and walked toward her, she had run up to him exclaiming "Daddy! Daddy! You are my hero. The nuns say you American soldiers were so very brave, and you stopped the Nazis, and they were all war criminals."

The man fell silent. Very silent. he looked stern. He was so sternly quiet that for a moment the young girl thought that he might hit her. (Something that he had never done before in his life.)

Then in a very gentle voice he asked her, "How can anyone in their right mind tell you kids such nonsense? The people in Germany had lost their nation to the thugs that often get to run things when there isn't a democracy. And the difference between the US soldiers and the German soldiers was that the German soldiers had been fighting in wars since 1937 - a long time spanning eight years. While we Americans had only been fighting in Germany for less than twelve months."

He paused, still looking more concerned than usual.

"The longer a war goes on, the more likely the soldiers will be de-humanized. Over time, inside war, fewer and fewer things matter. If your closest friends are killed, your moral sense goes missing. You feel like you could take out an entire village, even if the people in that village are not at fault.

"Soldiers over time become barbaric. It is simply human nature." He again paused. "And if this nation ever falls into the hands of such thugs, then the same thing will be true of our soldiers."

Then being a wise and gentle man, in the presence of a mere nine year old, he changed the subject to topics of a more lightweight nature, like her playmates, and the animal books she had him read to her. (Although she was long past the time when she couldn't read herself.)

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That era was not a perfect time, although as it was so long ago, I often feel nostalgic for it.
To be tucked in at night! To not have to worry about bills, and to be young enough that your best friends are not suffering strange new illnesses, like the fibromyalgia affecting so many of my friends.

There was a dark side, certainly. The same nuns who explained why our fathers were heroes also said if we did not pray at least one Rosary a day, then it was inevitable that a nuclear war would occur. Often I would fall asleep, halfway through the prayer sequence, only to have troubled dreams that ended in the explosions of mushroom clouds.

But back in the day, politicians were caring about the middle class. Our school systems were ever expanding, with many communities providing even college educations to the people for little if any money. Our infrastructure was newly built: the Eisenhower era's community colleges, community hospitals and endless freeways all were brand spanking new. The war we were fighting, or about to fight, was not sanitized for easy consumption. We had boots on the ground, and in a few short years, the news programs would be showing us exactly what the war we fought looked like, both to the Vietnamese people and to our troops.

Now in 2014, death that our tax dollars buys and encourages is sanitized. The fact that already one million people in the Ukraine have been displaced is only mentioned by the NYT's, and then way back around page 8 or 10 or maybe page 15. And the Big Endless War in the Middle East carries that early 1930's ring of propaganda to it - that those we kill our terrorists, and who among us has any fondness for terrorists? (And who among us ever even reflect that very term is how the elite of the Third Reich labeled their dissidents, foreigners, and Jews - as terrorists!)

But in the Third Reich, the middle class was given advantages. Many Germans bought their first homes. Many Germans had two week vacations for the first time ever. The Volkswagon - "the People's Automobile" was something every German family could afford.

Few here could point to any "gifting" to the American middle class. Anyone thinking anything these days knows that the One Percent has gotten wealthier, even under this present "Democratic" Administration. We support the wars, because what else can we do? Like that famous quote from "They Thought They Were Free" - "We were not happy with those things, but what could we do? We made a fist inside our pockets."

The American people does not like the "lesser of two Evils" meme. We do not like our tax dollars always readily available for wars, with over 1 trillion spent each year on war, weaponry and surveillance. We do not like the idea of drones, whether for killing foreigners, or for delivering packages. We do not like our militarized police forces. We do not like the lack of regulations over the Big Swindlers calling themselves Bankers, or the fact that our court system is far too friendly with Banking Firms, and Big Energy Firms, and Big Pharma and the rest of it.

The headlines in every other community out there scream "Homeowner shot by police" and the story is broadcast of yet another someone killed by the community police department as the police thought the garden hose nozzle was a gun. We understand that these are not good times. It is ominous, but we content ourselves that at least we don't have troops goosestepping their way down the pavement of the streets where we live. And we try to not think about how no one needs those troops any more - that the police themselves would do the bidding. Yes, they would do the bidding of the Elite, and not two thoughts about it, especially if there was some new catastrophic event, and the call to patriotism.

Because once a nation no longer is a democracy, and once a nation is ruled by those who are thugs (though today's politicians seem pleasant enough, on the surface, and they can address a crowd in a pleasant way, even as they strip their state of clean drinking water via the newly legislated agreements permitting fracking, or give a speech that says one thing one day and a different thing three months later,) then we as a nation will have a chance to test my father's theory about how "over time, people can become barbaric."