November 7, 2023

It Can't Happen Here - Smithsonian

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fascism-threatened-europe-play-warned-americans-federal-theater-project-180983051/

Although Adolf Hitler usually avoided one-on-one interviews, Thompson, who spoke German fluently, had managed to obtain one several years earlier, before he took office. She found “a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill-poised, insecure … the very prototype of the Little Man.” His eyes had “the peculiar shine which often distinguishes geniuses, alcoholics and hysterics.”

Meanwhile, some Ku Klux Klansmen in Georgia, imitating followers of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, began calling themselves the Blackshirts. Admirers of Hitler would soon form themselves into the German American Bund, whose brown-shirted followers drilled beneath the Nazi flag at a network of summer camps. Occultist William Dudley Pelley started a paramilitary militia known as the Silver Shirts. Pelley told a congressional committee that “Mr. Hitler had done an excellent job in Germany,” and that America could address the “Jewish question” by gathering all Jews into one city in each state.


Actors continued to perform It Can’t Happen Here after its Federal Theater Project run. In one Massachusetts summer stock production, Sinclair Lewis himself appeared onstage, playing the role of the heroic journalist who helps defeat the fascist militia. This allowed him to declaim such lines as “This isn’t any one-horse European country that a dictator could get hold of. No sir! … It can’t happen here!”
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Great article. So much more at the link. Seems the more things change, the more they become the same, or as Bob Dylan once sang; "aw, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now".

May 11, 2020

Clean Jokes

A Mechanical Engineer, Electrical Engineer and Computer Software Engineer were traveling down the road when their car suddenly stalled.

They drifted off to the side of the road.

The Mechanical Engineer said that it was obviously a problem with the engines Timing Belt. It must be slipping and not generating enough torque to keep the engine running.

The Electrical Engineer disagreed and said that it was obviously a problem with the cars Alternator not distributing power correctly and causing the engine to stall.

The Computer Software Engineer said; " man, you guys have no clue... all we need to do is get out of the car and then get back in"

October 19, 2018

Fuck MSNBC

Fuck the whole lot of them.

The same people ranting about "Democrats lack of message", are the very same people that gave us hours, upon hours of a FUCKING EMPTY PODIUM in 2016.

There were times I thought my TV had developed a new "screen saver".

You want a message? Here it is..."Go Fuck Yourselves"!

When sane people are once again in power, we're going to do all we fucking can to get rid of "corporate news", and ensure that quite a few of these "pundits" spend the remainder of their lives covering obituaries in some god-forsaken shit-hole in Dumbfuckistan, 'Murika.

August 21, 2018

Yes they can!!!

They can also be considered during sentencing as they can be used to establish character.