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This is a question I've long wondered and I see no reason why "it" could not happen here. "It's" happened in many other countries, so why do Americans view themselves as immune from the same sort of thing happening here? This is an interesting article I came across and worthy of a read...
Quote:
The customers always write. I get about 400 e-mails in response to my columns every week, which might explain why I didn't answer yours. Here, slightly edited, is one of the more interesting ones from last week. It's from Herr Moellers in Germany:
"Dear Mr. Sorensen,
"I have many American friends and used to go on business travel to the U.S. a lot (I stopped doing that after even our European governments have given in to Uncle Sam's appetite for information about individuals traveling to God's Own Country), and I am shocked by the deterioration of democracy in a country that I used to love. This administration is a shame and the destabilization they have brought to the world is scaring the s** out of me.
"My father was a Nazi soldier and he realized during the war what he and most of his generation was led into. I have learned from him that a nation can be guilty and that we must stop the arrogance of the powers at the very beginning. To me, America is becoming truly scary and the parallels to the development in Germany of the thirties (although the reason behind it are totally different) are sickening.
Are Parallels To Nazi Germany Crazy? / VIEW FROM THE LEFT (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/01/26/hsorensen.DTL - broken link)
The parallels to Germany are certainly not crazy. Obviously, extermination of any particular race won't happen. Strawman arguments typically involve something like "Germans killed Jews by the millions. We do not parallel the Germans". Genocide was merely one tenet of the Third Reich.
There are parallels with WW2 Soviet and pre-WW2 Germany. Soviets were obsessed with spreading their perceived utopian government to countries regardless of their wishes, although we do it in a more proxy type manner (not outright colonization). Germany glorified the military but didn't really care for their troops. I truly believe both parties feel this way, with a slight advantage on the neo-cons. The soldiers to them are dumb animals (as per Mr. Kissinger's remark) but the military is a glorious regime made up of these necessary pawns. At least the Soviets had the honesty to make it clear they didn't care for their own troops' well being. The Germans and current US leaders pretend to care for the troops and pay lip service to them in order to achieve their objective, and the soldiers do likewise out of fear of being looked at badly (until they retire or are discharged of course).
It sucks. It sucks watching unpatriotic leaders play a game of Stratego with people who'd sacrifice their lives for bettering our nation.
As far as citizens are concerned, I don't see outright shutting down borders for some time, but I see hard controls in place. Easy to spin as well. Stopping Americans from leaving the dollar or buying foreign assets could be seen as "a patriotic and necessary step in shoring up confidence", prohibiting gold ownership as "a prerequisite for the great dollar comeback". Like the Stasi in E. Germany, citizen informants could be hired in exchange for food or gas to rat out their neighbors, reducing necessary LEO to enforce these draconian measures.
"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway . . . (it) gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . . .and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated . . . by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. . .
Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . . .Each act. . . is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
You don't want to act, or even talk, alone. . . you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' . . .But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. . . .You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father. . . could never have imagined." :
From Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)
If and when Americans start demanding that politicians start to represent the concerns of our country first and stop looking to feather their own nests we will go down this road and most likely will not even notice it until it is too late.
It is past time to stop allowing the two parties to polorize the American people. Who does that benefit? The country? No. It only benefits career politicians. The fact is there are no 'neocons' or 'kneejerk liberals'. There is only spin and more the fool are we to continue to fall for it.
"What no one seemed to notice. . . was the ever widening gap. . .between the government and the people. . . And it became always wider. . . the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway . . . (it) gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about . . .and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated . . . by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. . .
Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'. . . must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. . . .Each act. . . is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
You don't want to act, or even talk, alone. . . you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' . . .But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. . . .You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father. . . could never have imagined." :
From Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)
I think this is exactly what is happening here. The Patriot Act, Warrantless Wire Tapping, REAL ID, all these presidential directives giving Bush more and more power. It's the same as the frog in the pot - turn up the heat ever so slightly and the frog doesn't notice.
It sucks. It sucks watching unpatriotic leaders play a game of Stratego with people who'd sacrifice their lives for bettering our nation.
As far as citizens are concerned, I don't see outright shutting down borders for some time, but I see hard controls in place. Easy to spin as well. Stopping Americans from leaving the dollar or buying foreign assets could be seen as "a patriotic and necessary step in shoring up confidence", prohibiting gold ownership as "a prerequisite for the great dollar comeback". Like the Stasi in E. Germany, citizen informants could be hired in exchange for food or gas to rat out their neighbors, reducing necessary LEO to enforce these draconian measures.
I see one more national disaster and them shutting down the borders. I also agree with you about your take on prevention of buying foreign assets or gold. I wonder if they could even be seized. Then I think it would be the next logical step to put people in detention camps "for their own good" (which are in the process of being updated and built and as Bush announced on April 1 2005 and referring to the Avian Bird Flu) or simply a fulfillment of ********'s vision in 2002 of throwing US citizens in them for being enemy combatants.
Funny thing is while this is possible,some seem to think if another party is elected it will simply go away or become unimportant.
Very few politicians are opposed to more government control of our lives,all three candidates want to control our lives more.
I can't see Obama or the former Clinton throwing US citizens in detention camps. I can see the current administration doing that. If you go way back to the start of REX84 (under Reagan) these measures started being implemented. Clinton wasn't for it.
America and American-occupied territories are run by bloodsucking Jewish vampires.
Plenty of historical, economic, cultural evidence.
Whether or not the top decision makers are Jewish, Aryan, or even Chinese, we shouldn't associate them with a particular race or religion. Don't fall into the same trap that the Weimar Republic citizens did.
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