Buddydarhma's entry today made me smile. It got to recommended! And so I decided to stop avoiding dkos and try another diary entry. I love dkos because its in some ways a safe place to play and explore and meet neat people of like beliefs. I hate dkos because its rife with bright but grimly self-righteous folks who rate anything with an opinion attached as "trolling" and after awhile, after thinking carefully about things and putting my best most considered foot forward, the response has been...often...mean and not very thoughtful. But that's neither here nor there. This is a diary about Godwin's Law, comparison to fascism, and other nonsense. If it gets deleted, sobeit...this is not my best most considerate foot...
Here's some takes. Take them or not...
...it seems to me that Bush is as much a creation of the west, as the republicans. Buddydarhma's entry had a comment comparing Bush's 100k or so in Iraq to the millions in labor camps. 330 thousand people died of AIDs last year in South Africa alone. A buck a day for inhibitors, times 365 day...triple it for the delivery systems...400 million bucks. That's a big stack of dead people for IP folks. For a couple of weeks Iraq funding they could be alive. Those people -- 40 million untreated aids cases -- are at your doorstep. And mine.
...the concentration camp is the world outside the west. The same calculations of marginal benefit -- how long can people work at a given age before dropping over of illness and malnutrition -- that went into Auschwitz apply themselves nicely to the exploitation of the third world, except you don't need pens. Its half the world going to bed hungry every night to pay debts to millionaires and make sure what you have, you keep, after a declining and unreliable fashion. You live in Versailles and so do I, government cheese and all. This too is at your doorstep, and mine.
...the second world war, the camps, have been described as the defining spiritual event of the 20th century. Why do we banish them from discussion? Comparisons aren't exact. The broad picture is indicative enough. The theme I hear over and over is, we want to be taken seriously. We can't be talking about Hitler! And the truth is, we will never be taken seriously until we take ourselves seriously, and look around and say what we see as being true. Saying Bush is just like Hitler is ridiculous. Saying that authoritarian systems have some distinct historical qualities, and they are in full bloom in present day America, is the plain truth. Saying that our economic and foriegn policies are built on the deaths of the innocent is also a truth.
...what's depressing to me about all the Hitler comparisons isn't their naivete -- people who cry for moderate and proper discourse usually are only asking for a couple cards off the bottom until their hand improves, or winking at their friends until the freaks go home. What's depressing is, its true in large part. I grew up thinking that I lived in a golden age -- not perfect, but the arc of history tending toward justice. With Reagan and Bush, it seems that the enlightnment is being rolled back, and the end result is, much of what is kind and beautiful and hopeful in the world goes away, for a while. Yeah, Bush is a necromancer, an eater of death, he glows when discussing it, and he is surrounded by serious men who see this as nothing but their peice of the pie and turn in the sun...but where do we go from here?
Humbug. Thanks for reading...