It's Time To Face The Not See Menace

[Dover]

My wife Trudy was born in Germany and came here as a young child. When she was in her late teens, she returned there for a year to live and work. As she began to reacquaint herself with family members, she felt bold and comfortable enough to ask them the difficult questions: How was it that the Holocaust could happen? What had they known? What had they done?

The answers she received could be summed up as: "We’d heard rumors about the death camps, but our government told us it was American propaganda -- and that’s what we believed." Now before we cast judgment about how bad the "good" Germans were, a little perspective. In his book Laughter In Hell: The Use of Humor During the Holocaust, Steve Lipman (who is Jewish) maintains that in the early days, Hitler was an object of ridicule. Many, if not most Germans didn’t like him. However, once Hitler came to power -- and showed muscle -- the average non-Jewish, non-communist, non-homosexual German faced a decision: Enroll themselves in Hitler’s vision of Deutschland Über Alles -- or make their lives unpleasant and their deaths untimely.

In "Matrix" language, they could either choose the Red Pill of painful awareness, or the Blue Pill of blissful ignorance. Those Germans whose conscience and consciousness offered them no choice but to choose the Red Pill realized they were very likely choosing a death sentence. For the Germans who swallowed the Blue Pill, the initial decision was easier. But as the war dragged on and the illusion shattered, they too ultimately had to face the awful truth about the devil’s mission they’d signed on to. While some continued, no doubt, to deny any wrongdoing until the day that they died, others had to live with the sad truth that there had been a "tipping point" which gave the Nazis absolute power -- and that the German people had missed the point.

Fast forward sixty or seventy years from Nazi Germany to Not-See America, and those of us who haven’t swallowed the pill of "American Security Through World Domination" are seeing that tipping point looming on the horizon and coming closer each day. To use a familiar analogy, when you throw a frog into boiling water (please don’t try this at home), he will immediately leap out and save himself. But if you put a frog in room temperature water and bring it to a slow boil, the frog will never sense the increase in temperature ... until he’s cooked.

As soon as Richard Nixon left office in disgrace nearly thirty years ago, a small cadre of conservatives made their own twisted vow of "never again." Beginning with the Reagan Administration (which friends of mine living in Washington at the time called "the meanest and most ruthless" they’d ever seen -- up until that point, of course), on through the Lee Atwater campaign for George the First, through Gingrich era in Congress, through the stealing of the election in 2000, and up to the current stonewalling going on, the temperature has been rising. And folks, we’re nearly cooked...>

cont'd

http://www.opednews.com/bhaerman050204_Nazi_not_see_menace.htm

[Deb]

1. "State of Emerge ‘n See"

I like that, thanks for sharing.

[Karenina]

2. What a cast of *characters.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x536598

[Lisa0825]

3. I just received this in my email from a coworker who voted for Bush,

but has been appalled by the Bush administration's actions. She's never been into politics much, but lately (since she knows I am very involved), she has been coming to me with a lot of questions, and, judging by this email, she's seeking answers in other places too. It's always nice to see another Texan regret their vote for Bush.