Those at the helm of the Nazi state and behind Mussolini's control in Italy, were not street thugs, though such brutes were often the lowest rung of the exercise of that power in those countries at the time. Those at the helm were not mindless brutes. These were cultured, educated, nominally religious people, many of them family men. They used the mythology of a traditional "family value"... of national exceptionalism and pride, to gain, to hold and to exercise power.
They also did so on the backs of those they targeted as being "against Germany" (i.e. they promoted themselves as synonymous with national identity)... against "perverted liberalism"... against "traditional family mores".
It didn't begin at the Warsaw Ghetto, or Treblinka, or Aushshwitz II. That is were it ended up... by degrees. By not recognizing what was going on. By not wanting to face it. By not willing to, wanting to, or capable of of finding the off button.
(more below the fold)
Taken together with what
Hunter posted and
Armando posted this is the real slide that we must hold the line on.
And the chill of what they discuss is valid. But when taken in context of who the Relgious-Radicals are who are pushing the agenda of this administration, as diaried by allentownboy and aitchdee.. it is vital that you understand how this is really starting to evolve. The Governmental apparatus and the political ground has and is being tilled where these seeds are going to take hold.
The easiest to target and demonize politically... "gays" are already in the cross-hairs. So I echo the question again:
Where's the off button?
When taken in the context of the true lessons on how fascism comes to power and where that can, and too often lead to, we have history as a guide which we must be ever mindful of. The things in which both Hunter's and Armando's articles cover, when viewed together are serious serious developments, which we must not let stand. This is where the understanding of what occurred as shown in the outstanding series on PBS last month on Auschwitz is vital. This path we are on is analogous to the adage about boiling a frog in water by degrees... when do you cross those thresholds?
Where is the off button?
This goes to the very core of the issue(s) and is the dynamic that occurred in Europe in the 30s, that incrementalism, by intelligent, educated, cultured people in power who have an agenda to exercise that power unilaterally and have vested nationalist (tribal, religious, ethnic, etc.) motives, is the path to genocide and the worst behaviors we as a species and as a society can engage in.
I realize in our everyday concerns, this could read like tin-foil hat hyperbole, that is bears no resemblance or relevance to our lives at first, but it is much more basic than that. It goes to principles and what we are as people and as a nation.
Not in my name, and not again.
