Got the car inspected, then went to Target and got a few more gifts. Spent most of the rest of the day packing and trying to decide what else I have to do to get ready for my trip. Scrabble group today.
WIDER: I've been reading "They Thought They Were Free," a fascinating book by Martin Mayer, first published in the early fifties. It's about the rise of Nazism in Germany and is eerily similar to what's going on in the U.S. now. (Oh,I know about Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here"--but, of course, it can. I want to read that next.) Mayer interviews a group of "little men," not the movers and shakers who brought about war and genocide, but ordinary citizens. Their lack of understanding of the true nature of their government (and, notably, of Hitler) and their acceptance of its horrors are mirrored, I'm afraid, in our own society today. Will write on this after I finish the book.
Speaking of "It Can't Happen Here," I just looked that up. On the second or third page, there's a speech by a "General Edgeways" that, incredibly, includes language so similar to Obama's recent "escalation speech," you'd swear Lewis came back from the grave. Here's an excerpt:
". . for these United States, alone among the great powers, have no desire for foreign conquest. Our highest ambition is to be darned well let alone!...But, as I explained to you, we must be prepared to defend our shores against all the alien gangs of international racketeers that call themselves 'governments,' and that with such feverish envy are always eyeing our inexhaustible mines, our towering forests, our titanic and luxurious cities, our fair and far-flung fields...For the first time in all history, a great nation must go on arming itself more and more, not for conquest--not for jealousy--not for war--but for peace...."
Got it, general: War is peace! New boss just like the old boss....
SATURDAY
Nothing much going on in the morning. Later, I walked to the P.O. to send some of the overseas Thanksgiving cards and check the weight of a...
3 comments:
Rosemary,
Does Mayer offer any suggestions for us 'little people'. Other than staying aware of what's going on and sounding out protests with my own circle, I don't know what to do. I feel overwhelmed by the whole situation. I voted for Obama and still support him, but I am not in favor of his escalation, and I don't know why he's doing it. There's so much we don't have privy to...and I think 'little people' give up. I'm still hopeful and will not sign off on Obama just yet. But I might in the near future and then.....who, who would do the right thing?
/pat
p.s. Rich always tells me anything I can't pack I can always buy there.
Pat,
Mayer doesn't offer suggestions at all--he simply reports and points out the way those he interviewed thought and acted. However, there are so many similarities to our own day--for instance:
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler (read "obama"), their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."
That's just a snippet from the book, which was published 55 years ago. Doesn't it sound eerily like what we're experiencing? But I believe that's ALWAYS the way a totalitarian government operates, no matter the affiliation.
More later...
Yes, it's downright scary.
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