I have spent the last four weeks teaching WWII at a Jewish nursing home, a question that came up multiple times from both my "students" and quite a few people I mentioned the class to was "how could the nazis be so evil?" I didn't have a concise answer, this is a question historians are still trying to answer in entire books on the subject. But I feel like I need an answer if I teach a course like this again. I'm not an expert on German history or WWII but I have taken courses on the Third Reich and read a great deal of secondary scholarship on the subject. So much so that I really felt saturated on everything about WWII before this class and did not want to do it. I was scared to death the first day (having a cold didn't help) but now that it is over I'm actually craving the rush of being in front of a classroom (it feels a little like the rush of riding a rollercoaster. However, I need a straight answer to the question of why the nazis did what they did that will get the ideas out there without dominating the discussion.
My first thought is that National Socialism in Germany was a perfect storm of events, however many of the factors leading to the machtergreifung (seizure of power) are present in most of the West even today. The racial ideology of Hitler and like-minded nazis was created out of ancient myths, Nineteenth Century psuedo-science, and social/behavioral engineering movements that proceeded the First World War. Admittedly, the nazis took all of these to a depraved, but not entirely illogical conclusion. Myths about Jewish secret practices (blood libel, etc.) are very old and the desire of Christians to "purge" their society of anything different goes back at least to the People's Crusade of Peter the Hermit in 1099.
Superstitious nonsense aside, there was just enough doubt in antisemitic minds that Jews had secretive plots to take over the world through control of banking and the press, indeed that the whole war was engineered for this purpose. Then there was Hitler's fantasy that Jews were also behind the bolshevik revolution in Russia, even more pertinent was the story that Jews stabbed Germany in the back and caused the surrender. In reality, Jews were a powerless minority that could be made to seem to have conspiratorial and malicious intentions by skillful manipulators.
Then there was the "science" of phrenology, largely a reflection of European Imperialism that assigned a racial hierarchy for why much of the world came under the control of whites, and assigned Jews, Roma, and Slavs to a pretty low place. The social engineering movements of Eugenics and Social Darwinism were more complicated. SD came first, this was an interpretation of Charles Darwin's theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest species applied to humans. Social Darwinists felt that certain people did not deserve life but that letting nature dispose of them would benefit society, what it meant in practice was that charity and any kind of social assistance were sucking resources from the fittest and allowing the unfit to survive, reproduce and drag down the human race. Eugenics was a "Progressive" response to SD in some ways, though it had a negative and positive side, the former is more applicable here. Negative Eugenics tried to incorporate SD ideas of unfitness and intervene through sterilization instead of waiting for nature. Degenerates bred too much, while the superior humans declined. While SD applied to anyone who was poor, eugenics had a racial component from the beginning but was primarily concerned with "improving" the white race by weeding out the degenerates. For a determined, energetic group of true believers is it really such a stretch to apply eugenics... to the living?
At their core, the nazis were a collection of criminals and the mentally ill (schitzophrenics, sociopaths, psychopaths, etc.), while psychoanalyzing hitler and the top nazis is dubious at best, further down in the party structure these types predominated. William Shirer generalized that deranged people were naturally attracted to the megalomanical but charismatic hitler and also many hypernationalist veterans of the Great War were attracted as well out of a desire to make Germany strong again and punish the "traitors" to the Reich such as communists and socialists. This collection of angry, violent people found a vehicle to participate in the nazi party, they were largely unwelcome in the more traditional parties. It is quite difficult to really understand Germany after WWI, everything was turned upside down, defeat and the very harsh peace treaty after years of privation and rationing made for many desperate people. This combined with inexperience with democracy and republican government, anything was possible but misery was the most likely. There were revolutionary uprisings, inflation, foreign military occupation, and routine but violent street fighting between right wing freikorps gangs and communists.
Amazingly, things were actually improving under the Weimar goverment until the stock market crash and onset of the Great Depression hit Germany hard. The economy was always fragile but international collapse caused widespread misery and unemployment in Germany, but opened the door for extremist political factions. Enter the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), whose intense organizing, demonstrations, rallies, and propaganda campaigns made them attractive to many lower-middle class Germans who did not support the more leftist parties but felt the mainstream parties had failed. These family farmers, small shopkeepers, and clerical professionals often discounted nazi antisemitism as overblown rhetoric. However, the nazis never won an outright majority or gained a popular mandate for world war and exterminating entire races.
Stay tuned for part 2, this is getting involved.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Rule of Law
Republic: From the latin "res publica" or "the people's business." Form of government characterized by popular elections for public officials, the right of people to liberty, and the rule of law.
Rule of Law: The concept in government that leaders are subject to laws and not above them. Power is not exercised abitrarily but in line with precedent and tradition.
Both of these were trumped by yesterday's ruling in the Wisconsin state supreme court. According to JSonline, "[i]n a rash decision based on flimsy reasoning, four justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court have upended the state open meetings law and opened the door for political mischief." People have come to start calling Wisconsin "Fitzwalkerstan" after the governor and legislative leader acting like the autocratic rulers of some Central Asian country, the kind that boils political opponents alive. Now we can add the supreme court to the other branches whose ideology trumps any adherance to the above-referenced ideas.
Unlike what certain fans of this reactionary and highly anti-American political warfare claim, this is not about liberals "not liking the results of an election." This is about those traditions we all supposedly used to hold dear, such as government officials are not to break the law of the land, or radically alter the basis of government to harm the political opposition. Elections do have consequences, the winners have the authority to pursue policies to address issues that are the public's business. Elected leaders do not however, have the authority to pursue highly divisive and harmful policies for the benefit of special interests over the public interest, especially when laws already in place are violated in the pursuit. That is what the issue is, nothing more. Governor walker and the republicans in the legislature violated laws that we have for exactly this reason, to prevent favors to special interests from being rammed through without notifying the public. The so-called "budget repair bill" was rammed through without the requisite notice, without real debate, and without the public getting to see it. That is why the lower court judge ruled that it be delayed, the highest court in the land decided though nakedly partisan reasoning that it was imperative to screw the teachers as soon as possible.
Human nature is inherently flawed, the ambition for power is at the root of Niebuhr's conception of human sinfulness. We are moving away from the rule of law to the rule of money and power, those with enough are now above the law unless the children of light can summon the will to oppose them.
Rule of Law: The concept in government that leaders are subject to laws and not above them. Power is not exercised abitrarily but in line with precedent and tradition.
Both of these were trumped by yesterday's ruling in the Wisconsin state supreme court. According to JSonline, "[i]n a rash decision based on flimsy reasoning, four justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court have upended the state open meetings law and opened the door for political mischief." People have come to start calling Wisconsin "Fitzwalkerstan" after the governor and legislative leader acting like the autocratic rulers of some Central Asian country, the kind that boils political opponents alive. Now we can add the supreme court to the other branches whose ideology trumps any adherance to the above-referenced ideas.
Unlike what certain fans of this reactionary and highly anti-American political warfare claim, this is not about liberals "not liking the results of an election." This is about those traditions we all supposedly used to hold dear, such as government officials are not to break the law of the land, or radically alter the basis of government to harm the political opposition. Elections do have consequences, the winners have the authority to pursue policies to address issues that are the public's business. Elected leaders do not however, have the authority to pursue highly divisive and harmful policies for the benefit of special interests over the public interest, especially when laws already in place are violated in the pursuit. That is what the issue is, nothing more. Governor walker and the republicans in the legislature violated laws that we have for exactly this reason, to prevent favors to special interests from being rammed through without notifying the public. The so-called "budget repair bill" was rammed through without the requisite notice, without real debate, and without the public getting to see it. That is why the lower court judge ruled that it be delayed, the highest court in the land decided though nakedly partisan reasoning that it was imperative to screw the teachers as soon as possible.
Human nature is inherently flawed, the ambition for power is at the root of Niebuhr's conception of human sinfulness. We are moving away from the rule of law to the rule of money and power, those with enough are now above the law unless the children of light can summon the will to oppose them.
Children of Darkness and The Big Lie
Sarah Palin's (and now Michelle Bachmann's) recent mangling of American History is especially abrasive to me and I have to assume many people with more than just a passing interest in and knowledge of our past. Personally, at this stage she really is nothing, a distraction from what the real evil is up to, those who actually have some power. This could change if the current media frenzy continues and she is somehow able to acquire a position that will harm others. I know that many people in my position have sworn to ignore Palin for this very reason, but it reminds me of many primary sources I read on the rise of Hitler and the Nazis that wanted to get a few thoughts down. I don't want to suggest that the governquitter is going to seize power and start concentration camps or anything like that, or that primary sources of the machtergreifung actually reflect what she or other republicans are doing, but there is a similar flavor that I could never argue in my scholarly writing.
Here is one clip of her rewriting history, one of many not that it matters. How many of her followers are going to come away from that thinking "I did not know the Revolution was fought over the right to bear arms, this is something I value highly as well, that Palin's alright." I don't have specialized knowledge in the Revolutionary Era to really argue it differently, but I will say that this, at its heart, was not a battle for the individual's right to have a firearm it was a battle for collective rights. The colonists, first leaders like Samuel Adams and others, were beginning to identify more with their fellow Americans than as subjects of the British Crown and part of the Empire. Individual rights were an important aspect of this, but not the crucial one, but that Americans wanted to be free collectively to chart their own course and rejected the right of remote Parliament to infringe on their sovereignty.
Collective (or community) over individual is something conservatives have a hard time recognizing, just as my friend often notices the difficulty conservatives have understanding "gross" vs. "net" as in if the Ryan plan to voucherize Medicare succeeds, the gross cost of health care for seniors will not change (actually will increase) but cost to government will drop and net spending by government on Medicare will decrease. Conservatives do not understand government as "us" but as just one more instituition in American society, government is not a collective expression of the society's needs and concerns but a thing that takes in money and gives it out to corporations.
Why this is a problem is somewhat covered by this post by MMFA, Palin makes a dumb comment that contains some lucky guesses and the conservative media is right there to back her up. Here are some further links I found, I'll leave it up to you to decide if there are similarities.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hitlerlie.html
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/oss-profile-03-02.html
Here is one clip of her rewriting history, one of many not that it matters. How many of her followers are going to come away from that thinking "I did not know the Revolution was fought over the right to bear arms, this is something I value highly as well, that Palin's alright." I don't have specialized knowledge in the Revolutionary Era to really argue it differently, but I will say that this, at its heart, was not a battle for the individual's right to have a firearm it was a battle for collective rights. The colonists, first leaders like Samuel Adams and others, were beginning to identify more with their fellow Americans than as subjects of the British Crown and part of the Empire. Individual rights were an important aspect of this, but not the crucial one, but that Americans wanted to be free collectively to chart their own course and rejected the right of remote Parliament to infringe on their sovereignty.
Collective (or community) over individual is something conservatives have a hard time recognizing, just as my friend often notices the difficulty conservatives have understanding "gross" vs. "net" as in if the Ryan plan to voucherize Medicare succeeds, the gross cost of health care for seniors will not change (actually will increase) but cost to government will drop and net spending by government on Medicare will decrease. Conservatives do not understand government as "us" but as just one more instituition in American society, government is not a collective expression of the society's needs and concerns but a thing that takes in money and gives it out to corporations.
Why this is a problem is somewhat covered by this post by MMFA, Palin makes a dumb comment that contains some lucky guesses and the conservative media is right there to back her up. Here are some further links I found, I'll leave it up to you to decide if there are similarities.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/hitlerlie.html
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/oss-profile-03-02.html
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Four is enough?
My Mom used to always ask "why would anyone want to be President in the first place? All anyone does is bitch about how bad they are, they take such criticism from all sides." In part I completely agree, but the question had to be at least partially rhetorical. Being the most powerful person on Earth has to be worth enduring a little yapping from mere mortals. The Roman Emperor Vaspasian responded to criticism by saying "I do not concern myself with the barking of dogs." He was one of the few though, and was rewarded by posterity for his tolerance by having the Italian word for urinal named for him. Most emperors had critics murdered in severe and interesting ways however. Have to wonder if sometimes, even just a bit, President Obama longs for some of this old-time religion. Fantasizing about feeding rush limbaugh to ravenous wild boars or flaying john boehner's perpetual tan off with a scalpel may be fun but not the subject of this post.
What concerns us here is whether the speculation here means that President Obama is cool with losing, or is considering calling off his reelection campaign altogether. That is troubling about an historian looking at current events, we're used to having all the facts in and then piecing together interpretation, motivation, and meaning. Here, not all the facts are in. Of course, there is enough concrete evidence that Barack Obama is not the president we need, and I mean America in the most generic sense, not simply liberals like me. Don't get me wrong I think he will make a alright ex-president, just like Jimmy Carter did more after he left the White House for the good of mankind than was possible while he was president. If there was position of honorary American Monarch, Barack Obama would be ideal because he is a unifying force for the sensible portion of the American population. I also know there are many who would disagree about Carter, but I'm talking to the grownups right now.
To begin, almost all of the problems Americans face today are the result of human decisions. Bad ones, but also decisions made by insidious predators knowing exactly how much harm they would have. The situation is practically unprecedented in human history, to my knowledge there has never been such a disciplined group of tyrants so bent on fulfilling the vile maxim "all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else." Even Hitler had Ernst Rohm and his supporters murdered when they became a liability to the totalitarian dream. Perhaps the communist party of the USSR, but the only example that comes to mind is Krushchev, but he only repudiated Stalin's madness after he was dead. Just as our totalitarian republicans disown guys like dubya, jack abramoff, and others once they are no longer furthering the cause of the predator state. The right words and concepts for what the radical right has done to this country really elude me. When I say that the corporatists are disciplined and unified I mean that there always seem to be enough places at the elite table for them not to knock each other off. The rest of us, well, social darwinism and propagandist scapegoating sure has eliminated any pressure on them. I've often wondered if there is something bigger and badder than this unified fascist movement, or if there is some way to cause division between them that could ignite real competition on the right.
Which gets us back to the question, let me put it another way. What is Barack Obama's purpose as Chief Executive of the United States? I've read an awful lot about American politics these days as "kabuki theater" all the decisions were made behind closed doors and all the vitriol from the right and capitulation on the left is simply staged for that minority of the population actually paying attention. If this is so, why do we bother? If big business really does have us all by the throat and it is all for show, why the theatrics? Why not just declare an autocracy and be done with it? There isn't enough energy left in even the engaged population to stage any kind of uprising, for all our work in Madison, what did it accomplish? So is Obama's purpose just a kind of judas goat or sacrifice? Pretending to pretend to clean up dubya's mess and setting us up for another mad dog republican president? Doing the business of big finance while the rest of us slide into the third world?
Every initiative seems an unneccessary compromise of half a loaf dreamed up by out-of-touch consultants to begin with. What compensation could exist to be such a punching bag for these vicious bullies, just utterly shameless liars. If the Obama vs. gop kabuki theater is real, I have a hard time imagining what kind of creature could both do their bidding and suffer the emasculating slings and arrows thrown at him. Even dubya seemed to care about his legacy at the end, maybe he "wrote" that book just for the royalties. If Barack Obama cared about his country, he would stand aside and let another Democrat run next year.
It isn't out of the realm of possibilities, for all the good of the Great Society LBJ stood aside when he realized he was wrong about Vietnam. Coolidge declined to run for reelection in 1928, he arguably set up the conditions for the Great Depression more than anything Hoover did. I may have put down the Madison protestors against Fitzwalkerstan but there was a lot there, energy, organizing, and even money in spite of everything that has happened (unemployment, $4 gas, foreclosures, and vicious counterprotests from braindead teabagger stooges) and a lot of new info on the the fascists was uncovered (koch bros and ALEC or whatever). A fraction of that kind of grassroots energy coalesed around a real Democrat like say, Russ Feingold could really challenge the status quo. A man can dream can't he?
What concerns us here is whether the speculation here means that President Obama is cool with losing, or is considering calling off his reelection campaign altogether. That is troubling about an historian looking at current events, we're used to having all the facts in and then piecing together interpretation, motivation, and meaning. Here, not all the facts are in. Of course, there is enough concrete evidence that Barack Obama is not the president we need, and I mean America in the most generic sense, not simply liberals like me. Don't get me wrong I think he will make a alright ex-president, just like Jimmy Carter did more after he left the White House for the good of mankind than was possible while he was president. If there was position of honorary American Monarch, Barack Obama would be ideal because he is a unifying force for the sensible portion of the American population. I also know there are many who would disagree about Carter, but I'm talking to the grownups right now.
To begin, almost all of the problems Americans face today are the result of human decisions. Bad ones, but also decisions made by insidious predators knowing exactly how much harm they would have. The situation is practically unprecedented in human history, to my knowledge there has never been such a disciplined group of tyrants so bent on fulfilling the vile maxim "all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else." Even Hitler had Ernst Rohm and his supporters murdered when they became a liability to the totalitarian dream. Perhaps the communist party of the USSR, but the only example that comes to mind is Krushchev, but he only repudiated Stalin's madness after he was dead. Just as our totalitarian republicans disown guys like dubya, jack abramoff, and others once they are no longer furthering the cause of the predator state. The right words and concepts for what the radical right has done to this country really elude me. When I say that the corporatists are disciplined and unified I mean that there always seem to be enough places at the elite table for them not to knock each other off. The rest of us, well, social darwinism and propagandist scapegoating sure has eliminated any pressure on them. I've often wondered if there is something bigger and badder than this unified fascist movement, or if there is some way to cause division between them that could ignite real competition on the right.
Which gets us back to the question, let me put it another way. What is Barack Obama's purpose as Chief Executive of the United States? I've read an awful lot about American politics these days as "kabuki theater" all the decisions were made behind closed doors and all the vitriol from the right and capitulation on the left is simply staged for that minority of the population actually paying attention. If this is so, why do we bother? If big business really does have us all by the throat and it is all for show, why the theatrics? Why not just declare an autocracy and be done with it? There isn't enough energy left in even the engaged population to stage any kind of uprising, for all our work in Madison, what did it accomplish? So is Obama's purpose just a kind of judas goat or sacrifice? Pretending to pretend to clean up dubya's mess and setting us up for another mad dog republican president? Doing the business of big finance while the rest of us slide into the third world?
Every initiative seems an unneccessary compromise of half a loaf dreamed up by out-of-touch consultants to begin with. What compensation could exist to be such a punching bag for these vicious bullies, just utterly shameless liars. If the Obama vs. gop kabuki theater is real, I have a hard time imagining what kind of creature could both do their bidding and suffer the emasculating slings and arrows thrown at him. Even dubya seemed to care about his legacy at the end, maybe he "wrote" that book just for the royalties. If Barack Obama cared about his country, he would stand aside and let another Democrat run next year.
It isn't out of the realm of possibilities, for all the good of the Great Society LBJ stood aside when he realized he was wrong about Vietnam. Coolidge declined to run for reelection in 1928, he arguably set up the conditions for the Great Depression more than anything Hoover did. I may have put down the Madison protestors against Fitzwalkerstan but there was a lot there, energy, organizing, and even money in spite of everything that has happened (unemployment, $4 gas, foreclosures, and vicious counterprotests from braindead teabagger stooges) and a lot of new info on the the fascists was uncovered (koch bros and ALEC or whatever). A fraction of that kind of grassroots energy coalesed around a real Democrat like say, Russ Feingold could really challenge the status quo. A man can dream can't he?
Thursday, June 9, 2011
World War Z (Time to downshift a bit)
The whole zombie obsession lately does seem a bit cliche, barely a day goes by when there isn't something about an undead pubcrawl, or game/quiz on whether you would survive an invasion of the walking dead, and that even became a new AMC series. My interest in the undead goes back pretty far, I watched the original Romero film with my jaw dropped when I was 11 and have been a fan ever since. Without delving too deep into a popular theme that zombies always reflect on society or that most of us go through life with so little awareness of the wider world that we are practically zombies ourselves, I'd like to express a few thoughts on Max Brooks' great novel. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
I would really recommend the audiobook version here though World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War [Abridged 5-CD Set] (AUDIO CD/AUDIO BOOK) it is much better with a full cast, and truer to the idea that this is an oral history. Hope this isn't too much like bandwagon jumping.
Just as an aside, I do like oral history quite a bit but so far in my professional work I haven't tackled trying it because I lack self-confidence and feel I would make a lousy interviewer, but I really enjoy listening to people's stories. An idea I had was to interview Vietnam Vets to construct a narrative of how many subscribe to the "stab in the back" theme, but I would have a hard time doing it objectively. According to the Wikipedia page (which is fine for just plain research like this) Brooks was inspired by Studs Terkel's oral history of WWII, and it really is an appropriate format because it makes this fantastic story somehow more believable. If I had to make a judgement it would be that it is hard to believe that all the characters interviewed sprang from the same imagination, even if some of them are a bit stereotypical. That is where I fall down in trying to write fiction, while I have encountered soo many diverse people over the years from all over, it's hard to make characters unique and differentiated. So far, there is not a whole lot about the upcoming film version but I would have to assume, being Hollywood, that the first-person memoir will probably not translate. The final product could end up like Starship Troopers
, where the novel was all journal entries and the movie was a straight chronology, WWZ would loose much of its charm if this is the case but we can hope right?
I've listened to the full cast audio version I think a half dozen times now over the past few years, it's really an engaging story and now that I know it was abridged I think I'd like to hear the rest. Maybe it could fill in the blanks because many of the interviewees talk about the events as they are common knowledge, the way everybody knows the basic outlines of WWII. But as it is fiction, the reader is left kind of scratching their head because many facts are only alluded to. I had to listen to the Iranian pilot's story several times before realizing that he was describing a nuclear war between Iran and Pakistan. And it was a surprise to read on the Wiki page that Russia in this storyline was now an "expansionist theocracy," no Russians were interviewed so the allusions to decimation of their military and atrocities in Ukraine and Siberia just sounded like reliving the past for those poor people.
Two of the highlights to me were Henry Rollins playing a mercenary hired to defend an entertainment mogul's survivalist compound and Mark Hamill as an infantryman telling battle stories that sounded so familiar to my time in the service. First off, Rollins was the perfect choice as he has such a love/hate relationship with the music and movie business, he always describes himself as a "Hollywood ninja" in his spoken word performances. Rollins is always disgusted by celebrities and the dirty business of entertainment and his contempt really shows in his all-too-brief appearance, such as accentuating the "tired, little whore who's famous for being a tired little whore" lines in describing (the unnamed) paris hilton. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the idea that some all-important celebrity types would congregate together and broadcast what they're doing during such a crisis, buying a spot in a luxurious fortress to flaunt their privilege and order their guards to shoot people fleeing to it (many of whom were probably fans beforehand) doesn't seem like too much of a reach.
There is nary a trace of Luke Skywalker in Hamill's performance as Todd Wainio, the vet of much of the combat in America against the zombies, and he sells the idea of a guy who actually fought and saw what weapons do to walking corpses to a tee. He reminds me of all the older sergeants I talked to during my tour, describing combat in a cool, casual way, especially all the mistakes made by his superiors that he had to follow. I can really identify with being just one helmet among many, and having to do really dumb stuff just because not doing it would have bad consequences for me, that I don't even know what they'd be. It was just not how you thought in uniform, recognizing how dumb things we did were and grumbling about it were one thing, but actually refusing to do it was completely cut off as an option. Maybe that's why I protest a little too loudly when some swaggering jackass tells me something antithetical to reality as a civilian, maybe that too is why people want to complain about the government and politics so much even though there is little we as individuals can do about it.
I would really recommend the audiobook version here though World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War [Abridged 5-CD Set] (AUDIO CD/AUDIO BOOK) it is much better with a full cast, and truer to the idea that this is an oral history. Hope this isn't too much like bandwagon jumping.Just as an aside, I do like oral history quite a bit but so far in my professional work I haven't tackled trying it because I lack self-confidence and feel I would make a lousy interviewer, but I really enjoy listening to people's stories. An idea I had was to interview Vietnam Vets to construct a narrative of how many subscribe to the "stab in the back" theme, but I would have a hard time doing it objectively. According to the Wikipedia page (which is fine for just plain research like this) Brooks was inspired by Studs Terkel's oral history of WWII, and it really is an appropriate format because it makes this fantastic story somehow more believable. If I had to make a judgement it would be that it is hard to believe that all the characters interviewed sprang from the same imagination, even if some of them are a bit stereotypical. That is where I fall down in trying to write fiction, while I have encountered soo many diverse people over the years from all over, it's hard to make characters unique and differentiated. So far, there is not a whole lot about the upcoming film version but I would have to assume, being Hollywood, that the first-person memoir will probably not translate. The final product could end up like Starship Troopers
, where the novel was all journal entries and the movie was a straight chronology, WWZ would loose much of its charm if this is the case but we can hope right?I've listened to the full cast audio version I think a half dozen times now over the past few years, it's really an engaging story and now that I know it was abridged I think I'd like to hear the rest. Maybe it could fill in the blanks because many of the interviewees talk about the events as they are common knowledge, the way everybody knows the basic outlines of WWII. But as it is fiction, the reader is left kind of scratching their head because many facts are only alluded to. I had to listen to the Iranian pilot's story several times before realizing that he was describing a nuclear war between Iran and Pakistan. And it was a surprise to read on the Wiki page that Russia in this storyline was now an "expansionist theocracy," no Russians were interviewed so the allusions to decimation of their military and atrocities in Ukraine and Siberia just sounded like reliving the past for those poor people.
Two of the highlights to me were Henry Rollins playing a mercenary hired to defend an entertainment mogul's survivalist compound and Mark Hamill as an infantryman telling battle stories that sounded so familiar to my time in the service. First off, Rollins was the perfect choice as he has such a love/hate relationship with the music and movie business, he always describes himself as a "Hollywood ninja" in his spoken word performances. Rollins is always disgusted by celebrities and the dirty business of entertainment and his contempt really shows in his all-too-brief appearance, such as accentuating the "tired, little whore who's famous for being a tired little whore" lines in describing (the unnamed) paris hilton. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the idea that some all-important celebrity types would congregate together and broadcast what they're doing during such a crisis, buying a spot in a luxurious fortress to flaunt their privilege and order their guards to shoot people fleeing to it (many of whom were probably fans beforehand) doesn't seem like too much of a reach.
There is nary a trace of Luke Skywalker in Hamill's performance as Todd Wainio, the vet of much of the combat in America against the zombies, and he sells the idea of a guy who actually fought and saw what weapons do to walking corpses to a tee. He reminds me of all the older sergeants I talked to during my tour, describing combat in a cool, casual way, especially all the mistakes made by his superiors that he had to follow. I can really identify with being just one helmet among many, and having to do really dumb stuff just because not doing it would have bad consequences for me, that I don't even know what they'd be. It was just not how you thought in uniform, recognizing how dumb things we did were and grumbling about it were one thing, but actually refusing to do it was completely cut off as an option. Maybe that's why I protest a little too loudly when some swaggering jackass tells me something antithetical to reality as a civilian, maybe that too is why people want to complain about the government and politics so much even though there is little we as individuals can do about it.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Welcome to Paradise
From todays NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05kristof.html?_r=1&src=tptw
Normally Kristof writes about the tragedies of injustice and inequality in the Third World, I suppose this situates him uniquely to recognize the pattern in the US just as his fellow columnist Paul Krugman was aghast at seeing the financial meltdowns afflict the US after studying them in foreign countries for so long. For many years I tried desperately to make this point to my libertarian and conservative friends, if you want to see how your fantasy would play out in real life, just visit Somalia. Perhaps this was a poor example, too foreign, too distant, and of course... too black. The idea never garnered a response, I have to assume because in the minds of probably most of them a majority white country could never devolve into barbaric tyranny right?
Maybe I've just spent too much time studying the fall of Rome (all three, republic, west, and east) and the fact that my German brethern... WERE THE BARBARIANS WHO WRECKED CIVILIZATION! Rome wasn't perfect for sure, and the barbarians were only the final nail in its coffin, but the circle seems to be completing itself. Life was better in the Empire than after it, trade, commerce, travel all improved people's lives and after the Germans took over, this collapsed. Those who believe the conservative nonsense simply can't imagine that life has changed and will continue to decline as the government-free utopia is implemented. I still wonder how barbaric extremists take hold, Krugman believes political polarization drives economic polarization and provided considerable reasoning for this belief in The Conscience of a Liberal
and the rich people support political extremists only after the process is kicked off. I suppose I am more concerned with the process than the cause, and where it leads. Nowhere good, that's for sure.
Also from today's times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05doerr.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
Libraries are pretty dear to me, I married a librarian and try to help out at our local library as much as I can. As a grad student, I also spend a lot of time at the university library. I remember talking to my wife about how there are people out there who would cackle with glee if libraries went extinct and the mass population had to buy all their books, movies, computers, etc because nothing is legitimate unless a profit can be made on it. Needless to say, she thought I was being melodramatic, but here we are. This column is a pretty good counterpoint to illustrate where the process is going and its ugliness. Young people, particularly men, have little conception of how society is interdependent. They don't use parks or libraries, school is done for most of them (only what, 25% of Americans have a college degree? Men much lower) and most don't care for children, so it is pretty easy to imagine society as a cut and dried shell. Work, bar or other entertainment, home. That's it, so what do we need public spaces and institutions for? I know, the teabaggers are mostly cranky old bags and over-the-hill cowboy types, so where do these young men fit? It is a subsection, for sure, but bitterness and resentment can set in pretty quickly once you see that life isn't fair or free. I've always thought of 'baggers as boomers who never really grew up, so whatever their age the whole anti-statist, anti-politics basket of propaganda appeals to the selfish and ignorant. Only one side goes full court press redirecting the source of harm from private tyranny to public tyranny, and it isn't liberals as I will attempt to illustrate.
The problem right now, as I see it, is there are lots of "goo goos" good government, public-spirited, responsible people committed to a society over the "you're on your own" collection of atomic individuals. So, goo-goos like the librarian in this story, work very hard to try and maintain civilization by sacrificing time, energy and money while the merry tax-cutting wrecking crew keeps up relentless pressure. Ever see the poster that says "imagine if schools got all the money they need and the air force had to have a bake sale to buy a bomber?" And, what do goo goos get for all their effort? *Item* See Wisconsin, "budget-repair bill." Demonization, scapegoating, ridicule. I appreciate their efforts really I do, but most people don't see these extrordinary sacrifices to keep society running, so an awful lot of selfish children in grownup bodies really believe that you can cut taxes, cut services and they will continue to work. Having your cake and eating it too, the shitty part of the American way. How long could you continue to swim so hard against the current if your efforts were not only not appreciated by many of the people you are trying to help, but actively denigrated by people who really hate you? By the time the last of the goo goos throws in the towel it will be far too late.
I really wish I could publish this post on Salon, or HuffPo or wherever the monster trolls congregate and see what happens. On second thought, that would probably once and for all put me over the edge. I only wanted to write a paragraph on each story, ugh.
What's the point of this? From playing chicken with the debt ceiling, catastrophic unemployment and foreclosures, stratospheric profits for corporations, and on and on. Our civilization is crumbling, because of a small minority of extremists acting very much like muslims they hate. We, America, are headed for a new Dark Age. Once barbarians, always barbarians.
Normally Kristof writes about the tragedies of injustice and inequality in the Third World, I suppose this situates him uniquely to recognize the pattern in the US just as his fellow columnist Paul Krugman was aghast at seeing the financial meltdowns afflict the US after studying them in foreign countries for so long. For many years I tried desperately to make this point to my libertarian and conservative friends, if you want to see how your fantasy would play out in real life, just visit Somalia. Perhaps this was a poor example, too foreign, too distant, and of course... too black. The idea never garnered a response, I have to assume because in the minds of probably most of them a majority white country could never devolve into barbaric tyranny right?
Maybe I've just spent too much time studying the fall of Rome (all three, republic, west, and east) and the fact that my German brethern... WERE THE BARBARIANS WHO WRECKED CIVILIZATION! Rome wasn't perfect for sure, and the barbarians were only the final nail in its coffin, but the circle seems to be completing itself. Life was better in the Empire than after it, trade, commerce, travel all improved people's lives and after the Germans took over, this collapsed. Those who believe the conservative nonsense simply can't imagine that life has changed and will continue to decline as the government-free utopia is implemented. I still wonder how barbaric extremists take hold, Krugman believes political polarization drives economic polarization and provided considerable reasoning for this belief in The Conscience of a Liberal
and the rich people support political extremists only after the process is kicked off. I suppose I am more concerned with the process than the cause, and where it leads. Nowhere good, that's for sure.Also from today's times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05doerr.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
Libraries are pretty dear to me, I married a librarian and try to help out at our local library as much as I can. As a grad student, I also spend a lot of time at the university library. I remember talking to my wife about how there are people out there who would cackle with glee if libraries went extinct and the mass population had to buy all their books, movies, computers, etc because nothing is legitimate unless a profit can be made on it. Needless to say, she thought I was being melodramatic, but here we are. This column is a pretty good counterpoint to illustrate where the process is going and its ugliness. Young people, particularly men, have little conception of how society is interdependent. They don't use parks or libraries, school is done for most of them (only what, 25% of Americans have a college degree? Men much lower) and most don't care for children, so it is pretty easy to imagine society as a cut and dried shell. Work, bar or other entertainment, home. That's it, so what do we need public spaces and institutions for? I know, the teabaggers are mostly cranky old bags and over-the-hill cowboy types, so where do these young men fit? It is a subsection, for sure, but bitterness and resentment can set in pretty quickly once you see that life isn't fair or free. I've always thought of 'baggers as boomers who never really grew up, so whatever their age the whole anti-statist, anti-politics basket of propaganda appeals to the selfish and ignorant. Only one side goes full court press redirecting the source of harm from private tyranny to public tyranny, and it isn't liberals as I will attempt to illustrate.
The problem right now, as I see it, is there are lots of "goo goos" good government, public-spirited, responsible people committed to a society over the "you're on your own" collection of atomic individuals. So, goo-goos like the librarian in this story, work very hard to try and maintain civilization by sacrificing time, energy and money while the merry tax-cutting wrecking crew keeps up relentless pressure. Ever see the poster that says "imagine if schools got all the money they need and the air force had to have a bake sale to buy a bomber?" And, what do goo goos get for all their effort? *Item* See Wisconsin, "budget-repair bill." Demonization, scapegoating, ridicule. I appreciate their efforts really I do, but most people don't see these extrordinary sacrifices to keep society running, so an awful lot of selfish children in grownup bodies really believe that you can cut taxes, cut services and they will continue to work. Having your cake and eating it too, the shitty part of the American way. How long could you continue to swim so hard against the current if your efforts were not only not appreciated by many of the people you are trying to help, but actively denigrated by people who really hate you? By the time the last of the goo goos throws in the towel it will be far too late.
I really wish I could publish this post on Salon, or HuffPo or wherever the monster trolls congregate and see what happens. On second thought, that would probably once and for all put me over the edge. I only wanted to write a paragraph on each story, ugh.
What's the point of this? From playing chicken with the debt ceiling, catastrophic unemployment and foreclosures, stratospheric profits for corporations, and on and on. Our civilization is crumbling, because of a small minority of extremists acting very much like muslims they hate. We, America, are headed for a new Dark Age. Once barbarians, always barbarians.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
When keeping it democratic goes wrong
William F. Buckley stated long ago that a central problem of liberalism was the fetishization of democracy, making the means of choosing our leaders an end unto itself. The last few days I have noticed this trend, and I am gloomier than ever. It isn't so suprizing that the straight corporate media would worry that the republicans are having trouble finding a presidential candidate, but now I'm noticing the lament in left/liberal publications as well. "Woe is us, democracy is broken because the opposition can't find a candidate that can beat us." This is not healthy. Buckley was concerned less with the method of selection as whether the leader would be "good." Of course he thought democracy was a fine thing if the electorate was mature enough to elect conservative leaders he could approve of, I don't approve of his conclusion but the line of thinking is good, democracy is a means of finding good leaders. And, wasting time worrying about the state of a party whose sole goal is to destroy you and wreck everything you stand for is an awfully good reason why liberalism and Democrats are such a failure.
I haven't looked into it yet but I suspect there was similar articles published in The Nation and The New Republic among others when the republicans nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. I can see it now, "democracy is finished, the republicans have committed suicide. Woe is America, the two party system is over." LBJ knew what to do of course, he told the truth about Goldwater with the "Daisy" ad. Even though good liberals poo pooed this and forced his team to pull the ad, the idea was correct. 'Elect Goldwater, get nuclear war.' Now, I don't want to go too far into the "one party of corporatists with two branches" territory, but there is something wrong with prizing civility and process when the other side laughs at this idea. The corollary of the worrying about the gop candidate is the boneheads criticising any attempt of Democrats to use medicare and gop plans to destroy it to, you know, try to win. These guys must be thanking God that they can now sabotage their party by commenting on whatever it is Anthony Weiner is accused of doing (I don't care what it is) and not have to talk about unemployment, foreclosures, union-bashing, and the republican class war wreckage of the last three decades.
I soured on President Obama for much the same reason, for the first time I was actually enthusiastic about democracy, he talked the talk, walked the walk and then when finally in a position to reestablish the US as a nation of laws with a vibrant if messy corrective actions, he let me down hard. Above the fray our president stays instead of first, in the interest of the rule of law over royal whim, he lets every bush creature involved in the massive lawbreaking that surrounded foreign policy and domestic surveillance (I am so tired of even mentally recounting the criminal acts of that group of gangsters) go without so much as a scolding. Then, with massive majorities in Congress, he gives away any chance of showing the public that elected him that government isn't a giant clusterfuck by producing a sufficient stimulus to save people's homes et al. and holding the bank tyrants accountable for the collapse their greed produced. He remained aloof during the chance to finally fix our healthcare system, it would have been so easy. Day One: Medicare for all, bang, done. But no, we had to endure screeching about death panels and the rise of a genuine fascist party in the land of the free, for well over a year. It could have been so different, if not for this misplaced committment to civility and compromising with evil, etc.
Fetishizing democracy is the most generous explanation for why the Democrats fight, stand there is more like it, with both hands tied behind their backs. Of course, what they say in their myriad email communications begging for money is something different. Guys, we can watch C-SPAN, we know there is no fight in any of you. And so, we slouch toward another grueling presidential contest not asking what we (Democratic leaders) can do for our country, but how can we help our opposition.
I haven't looked into it yet but I suspect there was similar articles published in The Nation and The New Republic among others when the republicans nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. I can see it now, "democracy is finished, the republicans have committed suicide. Woe is America, the two party system is over." LBJ knew what to do of course, he told the truth about Goldwater with the "Daisy" ad. Even though good liberals poo pooed this and forced his team to pull the ad, the idea was correct. 'Elect Goldwater, get nuclear war.' Now, I don't want to go too far into the "one party of corporatists with two branches" territory, but there is something wrong with prizing civility and process when the other side laughs at this idea. The corollary of the worrying about the gop candidate is the boneheads criticising any attempt of Democrats to use medicare and gop plans to destroy it to, you know, try to win. These guys must be thanking God that they can now sabotage their party by commenting on whatever it is Anthony Weiner is accused of doing (I don't care what it is) and not have to talk about unemployment, foreclosures, union-bashing, and the republican class war wreckage of the last three decades.
I soured on President Obama for much the same reason, for the first time I was actually enthusiastic about democracy, he talked the talk, walked the walk and then when finally in a position to reestablish the US as a nation of laws with a vibrant if messy corrective actions, he let me down hard. Above the fray our president stays instead of first, in the interest of the rule of law over royal whim, he lets every bush creature involved in the massive lawbreaking that surrounded foreign policy and domestic surveillance (I am so tired of even mentally recounting the criminal acts of that group of gangsters) go without so much as a scolding. Then, with massive majorities in Congress, he gives away any chance of showing the public that elected him that government isn't a giant clusterfuck by producing a sufficient stimulus to save people's homes et al. and holding the bank tyrants accountable for the collapse their greed produced. He remained aloof during the chance to finally fix our healthcare system, it would have been so easy. Day One: Medicare for all, bang, done. But no, we had to endure screeching about death panels and the rise of a genuine fascist party in the land of the free, for well over a year. It could have been so different, if not for this misplaced committment to civility and compromising with evil, etc.
Fetishizing democracy is the most generous explanation for why the Democrats fight, stand there is more like it, with both hands tied behind their backs. Of course, what they say in their myriad email communications begging for money is something different. Guys, we can watch C-SPAN, we know there is no fight in any of you. And so, we slouch toward another grueling presidential contest not asking what we (Democratic leaders) can do for our country, but how can we help our opposition.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)