<p>In this job, it helps to have stock phrases. That way, you don't have to think up something new and clever every time you answer an email Not when something old and clever will do.</p><p>For instance, if a reader writes to me, confused — my lucid, well-reasoned argument is just <i>crazy</i> to them — demanding I hold their hand and explain it to them again, perhaps using a felt board, I barely pause.</p><p>"Sir, I have found you an argument," I reply, quoting Samuel Johnson. "But I am not obliged to find you an understanding."</p><div class="RichTextSidebarModule Enhancement" data-module data-align-center><a class="AnchorLink" id="module-430000" name="module-430000"></a>
<div class="RichTextSidebarModule-title">Opinion bug</div>
<div class="RichTextModule-items RichTextBody"><h2>Opinion</h2></div>
</div><p>Not many actual Nazis write. But when imitators and admirers share their thoughts, to stretch the term, often in an argot I call the Fascist Plural. "We were amused at your feeble Semitic attempt at …" I often deploy a line that is my own, though well worn from use.</p><p>"You know, the whole Nazi thing didn't work out so well for the Germans."</p><p>It really didn't. What gets overlooked in the glare of their crimes — at least 70 million people killed in World War II — is this toll includes 7 or 8 million German citizens and soldiers. Quite a lot really. Not to mention their country pulverized and divided in half, with the Soviets ushering in a half century of jackboot repression.</p><p>What I'm really saying is, "Look to history." Because history is a guide.</p><p>We see how hatred blows back in the face of the hater. The old adage "hatred is taking poison and expecting someone else to die," is true, and on a national scale, multiplies. Didn't end well for Hitler. Despots, surrounded by yes men, make awful blunders. Mao's Communists remained in power so got to write their history. But 30 million Chinese died in Mao's incompetence-induced famines.</p><p>They don't teach that in China. Squelching history is what totalitarians do. And budding totalitarians.</p><p>This past week, the U.S. Interior Department announced it will be putting warning signs outside the Smithsonian, advising the displays within are hopelessly biased (every accusation of this administration is a confession) because they include bad stuff, and not the cavalcade of greatness leading up to the apotheosis of national joy, triumph and achievement of Donald Trump, <i>Imperator Supremus Maximae Gloriae.</i></p><p>The whole putting-your-name-on-everything hustle is a play right out of the ancient tyrant playbook. From Ramses II, chiseling his name onto the tombs of the previous pharaohs, including his own father, Seti. To Stalin airbrushing opponents out of historical photos. To our president bent on tearing down the Kennedy Center if his name can't be emblazoned on it, destroying a cultural center that has enriched our nation for over 50 years. Effacing the name of a beloved, martyred president. I remember a time when the shock of that hissy fit, embarrassing in a toddler, would have convulsed the nation. Now it's just another Monday.</p><p>Far right nationalism isn't just on the march here. If you need more perspective — and yes, I know the nation is divided between those who figured it out long ago and those who never will — look to Europe. The Germans are at it again. The <i>Alternative für Deutschland,</i> "Alternative for Germany," or AfD, a far right party dusting off the Foreigners = Bad Strategy so popular there in the '30s, shocked that nation earlier this month with a strong election showing in a small state in the former East Germany. They are now a player in German national politics, and it is no mystery the game they want to play.</p><p>"The party’s <a class="Link" href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3972382144120426476/1160597924620426651#" target="_blank" >election platform</a> pledged to push artistic institutions to celebrate prewar German history, break from the influences of multiculturalism and end Germany’s 'guilt complex' about the country’s Nazi past," The New York Times reported Saturday.</p><p>Yeah, can't have schools spilling the beans about the massive ruin that resulted from evil philosophy they're using to try to feel alive today. It's like the Germans brought a tiger cub home and immediately went around the house, throwing away certain books, "Tips for Not Being Mauled by Tigers" and "First Aid for Tiger Owners" and such. Because tigers are so cool.</p><p>The United States is a great country, its history filled with glory — we invented freedom, at least the idea that you could run your own life and not dance to the tune of kings. But it's also filled with a heartbreaking litany of times when we betrayed our best principles.</p><p>Like right now, when our leadership is in the clutches a crybaby who spends his day clutching at glory no rational history nor decent populace would afford him. A blizzard of government snowflakes trying to avoid the ray of the sun that will, please God, someday melt them away.</p>
At least Joe Biden isn’t being airbrushed away – yet 2026
IUSTITIA.BG – Investigations 2009-2026 2026-09-20 17:06:46
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