A dinner conversation that's still bothering me.

[DFW]

18. Here in Yerp

We still have some restrictions on what passes back home for "freedom of speech."

Here in Germany, Nazi propaganda or anything that gets too uncomfortably close to it is not allowed. Fox Noise does not have a German language operation. There is a reason for that. Openly denying the Holocaust is actually on the books as a crime (in Austria, too). There is a reason for that, too. Raise a generation of kids who believe it never happened, and you give the mind-set that let it happen the first time a chance at a repeat performance. Today's Germany is a bastion of pacifism, and is as reluctant to get involved in a war as the generation of 1939 was eager to. Neo-Nazis exist here, but are a tiny minority looked down upon by society. We see video clips of Trump supporters in Berkeley beating up women, identified and not arrested. That is NOT what we want here. One Kristallnacht was enough, thank you very much.

Don't get me wrong, it's not paradise here as some choose to believe. The bureaucracy is crushing, and you need ever-increasing paperwork by an overbearing, corrupt state apparatus that thinks it has to know everything about you while enriching its "officials" at the expense of overburdened taxpayers. Stalin meets high tech.

But in between all that, the do manage to teach compassion and internationalism here. High school kids are encouraged to take a year abroad. Anywhere, as long as it's a different country. Neighboring France or far off New Zealand, it doesn't matter. Just get OUT of here and meet people who speak another language and think differently. Live with them, learn from them. No one nation is alone here. "Making America great again" is just as much a fantasy as "Juche" is.

The USA is not devoid of people who think like this. At age 16, I had the chance to get out of my stifling high school and participate in a (then-experimental) program to send a couple dozen high school kids for a year abroad to either France or "Spain (actually Catalunya)." Catalan was still forbidden in schools when I went, so there was no danger of us getting linguistically distracted in school. Outside, of course, everyone still spoke Catalan, and we all learned it to some degree. I soaked it up like a sponge, and still run down to Barcelona maybe once a month even today.

We sent our girls off to study for at least a semester in an exotic foreign land (the USA), and they profited immensely from the experience, as I did in Spain. Both ended up in college there. One stayed (she found a job in her field there), the other did not (she found a job back here in Germany and moved back). One did a summer stint with the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in Sierra Leone for the summer instead of clerking for some judge, as law school students are expected to do. We tried to teach them there's nothing they couldn't do, and they seem to believe it. One brashly put in for partner in her big international law firm and was accepted--youngest partner ever at age 31 (figured if she could survive Sierra Leone, she could surely do this).

All this was possible, at least in part, because media as propaganda organ here was used to prop up some evil regimes in the past, and the people here do not want it again. We see Putin and Erdoğan harassing, arresting, even having thugs murder journalists. Even in the States now, the man posing as president calls any journalist critical of him "fake news." No wonder he admires Putin and Erdoğan so much. He's their wannabe. Read Göring's statement from his jail cell at Nürnberg. The people don't want war, so you have to convince them that there is an enemy out there that must be fought. To do that, you need to control the media. Whether it's done by State take-over, by intimidation or by money, it's the same goal: control what the masses think. Convince people in Louisiana (or anywhere else, for that matter) that those starving children in South Sudan are not poor helpless wretches but their enemies, and you'll have them telling you why it's in America's best interest should let them starve.

Something else Göring observed (correctly, in my opinion): when he said people don't want war, he made sure he said it was the same in any country, whether a democracy, under communism or in a fascist dictatorship. In all cases the people must be made to want it by artificially shaping their opinion, giving them an enemy they need to fight for some reason. This is why I reject arguments that need to use the words "corporate" a dozen times and blame capitalism. ANY country, ANY system can start a war if their media manipulates their opinion to the point where they think it's a good idea. The Germans were convinced that the attack on Poland was necessary in 1939. The Russians were convinced that attacks on Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 were necessary to defeat danger to "socialism." The USA, despite huge domestic opposition, got into conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq, and was even convinced to close at least one of its eyes while Reagan invaded Grenada (of all places!) and Panama. If the ruling elite want it, there's a good chance they'll get it. Like George Carlin said, they're a club, and we're not in it--at all, at all, at all.