Life in the Age of Dumb, part 5: Nazis never die.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Maybe the best option is expatriation, but somehow I think the rabid nationalism that gave rise to the nazi party in germany wont work here, at least not quietly.

I may be missing what you said, but it sounds to me as if you think Americans aren't rabidly nationalistic.

If so, please excuse me while I give you an incredulous look for as long as it takes my mind to stop boggling.

Yes, many americans are rabidly nationalistic, but there is also a lot of counterculture that exists in america. Its not quite so easy to lump americans into one huge group that can all agree, because its quite the opposite.

So give someone else the silly look.

counterculture in america is manufactured adn packaged by the same folk whos brought you the establishment(tm).

This is the correct answer.

[eighteen buddha strike]

Maybe the best option is expatriation, but somehow I think the rabid nationalism that gave rise to the nazi party in germany wont work here, at least not quietly.

I may be missing what you said, but it sounds to me as if you think Americans aren't rabidly nationalistic.

If so, please excuse me while I give you an incredulous look for as long as it takes my mind to stop boggling.

Yes, many americans are rabidly nationalistic, but there is also a lot of counterculture that exists in america. Its not quite so easy to lump americans into one huge group that can all agree, because its quite the opposite.

So give someone else the silly look.

counterculture in america is manufactured adn packaged by the same folk whos brought you the establishment(tm).

This is the correct answer.

I dont believe that.

I do believe that humans are inherantly ignorant and selfish.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make was that America is diverse enough that once any group establishes any form of control, you'll have plenty of others moving to knock them down and occupy the leftover space.

[Horab Fibslager]

everyone is ignorant, hoever as for selfish, the american media consumer feeding machine fits the bill quite readily, and liek any other cultural prodtuct popular among a given demographic, "counterculture" is quite profitable. it certainly wasn;t middle classed lower classed disenfranchised youths/etc who put up the thousands of dollars necessary to produce/manufacture/distribute all those punk/hiphop/ cds, and other culkrutal consumer cowpatties.

[archPope Rocket P Llama]

Maybe the best option is expatriation, but somehow I think the rabid nationalism that gave rise to the nazi party in germany wont work here, at least not quietly.

I may be missing what you said, but it sounds to me as if you think Americans aren't rabidly nationalistic.

If so, please excuse me while I give you an incredulous look for as long as it takes my mind to stop boggling.

Yes, many americans are rabidly nationalistic, but there is also a lot of counterculture that exists in america. Its not quite so easy to lump americans into one huge group that can all agree, because its quite the opposite.

So give someone else the silly look.

counterculture in america is manufactured adn packaged by the same folk whos brought you the establishment(tm).

This is the correct answer.

I dont believe that.

I do believe that humans are inherantly ignorant and selfish.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make was that America is diverse enough that once any group establishes any form of control, you'll have plenty of others moving to knock them down and occupy the leftover space.

I don't think a blanket statement declaring all counterculturals establishment is totally fair. I'm not so sure what to think about Richard metzger and his Disinfo company, but he's charming if nothing else and has a Crowlean appeal to him, but I take everything his website says with a grain of salt.

I think being counterculture is usually kind of silly myself, but whatever lights your fire.

[Horab Fibslager]

metzger is oen of the most blatant example sof entrepeneurial countercoulture cpitalism. don't know if you ever noticed all teh ads on that site before...

[archPope Rocket P Llama]

yes, but as he pointed out in a speech, what's wrong with making some money off of what you love? Why should counterculturals be reduced to sitting around posting weirdness on the internet and getting nothing? His site does have lots of cool stuff on magick and conspiracy theories, it's more comprehensive than some weirdo in his basement could have done. I dont' trust him completely, but he doesn't deny that he is interested in making a buck off of his interests.

One of the big problems with counterculturals is that they are very very cliquey. Y'all are more than happy to scream sellout on anyone who is tired  of living a modest-poor lifestyle. The indie rock scene is just as bad. Have you seen the Disinfo TV series? It's a slick package, which will anger many CCs, and it has it's tongue just digging into it's cheek flesh. It's actually pretty funny. (and the 2nd disc is more than worth the price.)

Of course you can't trust Metzger anymore than you can trust Crowley, but he makes a better icon for the counterculture than most of it's members.

[gnimbley]

Money corrupts, and absolute money corrupts absolutely.

[Malaul]

please for the love of coffee, STOP THE METAQUOTES

[archPope Rocket P Llama]

please for the love of coffee, STOP THE METAQUOTES

How dare you take Coffee's name in vain!?

[Malaul]

IM THE CAFFEINATRIXX!!
I take coffee very verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry seriously
so when I say for the love of coffee, Im serious in my request for no more metaquotes

[archPope Rocket P Llama]

IM THE CAFFEINATRIXX!!
I take coffee very verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry seriously
so when I say for the love of coffee, Im serious in my request for no more metaquotes

*cowers in fear* i...wasnt...metaquoting....it was the gnome! Forgive me for sharing a state with him.

[Trollax]

The Good Reverend is feeling a whole lot of outrage right now, and that isn't an emotion that he's used to.

As a confirmed pessimist, I am always (I thought) prepared for the worst in people.  I laugh when crooked politicians sneer at the public, and I actually think corporate scandals should be scored, based on factors such as amount, brazen-ness, etc.  Hell, they should probably be an olympic sport...

But last night, I read Sy Hersh's story about the Abu Graib allegations, specifically the ones Rumsfeld referred to as "there are other charges, very serious ones, that should never be made public".

Those of us that are older remember Sy Hersh; he's the guy that broke the My Lai massacre story during Vietnam.  The guy has the old fashioned notion that the press is there to report, not cheerlead...and here's what he had to say...

Sitting down?

The "other charges" are this:  US soldiers and/or Iraqi guards under US command sodomized 15 and 16 year old boys, in front of other prisoners (in some cases relatives of the boys), to "interrogate" them (and the other prisoners).

Let me say that again:  THEY SODOMIZED CHILDREN.

Aren't you PROUD of our military, out there defending civilization?  If it wasn't Sy Hersh saying it, I wouldn't believe it.

But wait, it gets better:  It seems that this was condoned, even AUTHORIZED, by persons such as General Karpinski (the General in charge of the prisons), and Donald Rumsfeld himself.  Odds are, the president knew...and if he didn't, he does now, and he hasn't fired Rumsfeld.

If General Patton were alive today, he'd shoot the whole lot of them, himself.

But it gets even better...the New Yorker carried this story last week, and the networks won't touch it.  Why not?  This isn't Geraldo Rivera we're talking about...it's one of the most respected reporters, one of the ONLY remaining respected reporters, in America.

Maybe they just don't want to look.  Maybe they're even just a tad ashamed that the war, the war THEY beat the drums for, has come to THIS.

Remember those old history books, the ones that talk about WWII and the Nazis?  Chuck them out, they're obsolete.  We've got our OWN Nazis, now.  

That's the thing about Nazis...they're like cockroaches.  You can stomp them, burn them, poison them...and the pigfuckers just keep coming back.

What's worse is, by the time you see one, there are thousands.

Welcome to the post-American century.  Welcome to the American Empire.

Or kill me.

If you'd ever thought the west wasn't anti-muslim under the surface and moving closer to a full-scale outbreak of pimpled, furry-toothed bigotry, then this one oughtta seal it.

[Rupert Giles]

To quote from one of my favorite films, M*A*S*H:
"Goddamn army."

I wish this suprised me, but it doesn't. I've loathed the military for awhile now, and this doesn't seem too suprising. Disgusting, repulsive, sickening, inhuman and vile yes. Suprising, nope. Not in the least. How can you expect a bunch of brainwashed killers, people trained to drop fiery death from the sky onto civilians, how can you expect these people to be civil? The whole goddamn army is a goddamn disgusting spectacle. These kiddy molestors are just the ones they've caught. Anyone here who doubts that Iraqi women and young girls have been raped by US soldiers, raise your hand.

The whole military is a sick obscene mess. Nesesarry? I have my doubts, but no matter what you do, soldiers always are always have been and always will be trained killers. Nothing more, and nothing less. Sugarcoat it all you want, but they are trained to put bullets into people and drop fiery death from the heavens. They are thugs.

The Good Reverend was Army (infantry) for 10 years, and never did, or even saw, that kind of shit.  This problem is top-down.

You can just fuck off, stereotype-boi.

Rev Roger,
"Thug".

When was your term?  And did you go through Fort Jackson for boot?  I kind of ask this of everyone I meet who is in the army, as I'm trying to find anyone who had any interaction with my Grandfather.  He was an E-9, was in the army for 27 years, then retired to teach Map Training in Basic at Fort Jackson.  He retired from that in '94 or there abouts.

There were lots of questions I got to ask him before he died, and we talked alot about the things he'd seen and done, and what he thought of the world, but I was 14 and 15, then and I find now that I'm older there are just so many more questions that I want to ask that I will never get the chance to have answers to, no matter how many times I ask his urn.

[Rupert Giles]

The Good Reverend is feeling a whole lot of outrage right now, and that isn't an emotion that he's used to.

As a confirmed pessimist, I am always (I thought) prepared for the worst in people.  I laugh when crooked politicians sneer at the public, and I actually think corporate scandals should be scored, based on factors such as amount, brazen-ness, etc.  Hell, they should probably be an olympic sport...

But last night, I read Sy Hersh's story about the Abu Graib allegations, specifically the ones Rumsfeld referred to as "there are other charges, very serious ones, that should never be made public".

Those of us that are older remember Sy Hersh; he's the guy that broke the My Lai massacre story during Vietnam.  The guy has the old fashioned notion that the press is there to report, not cheerlead...and here's what he had to say...

Sitting down?

The "other charges" are this:  US soldiers and/or Iraqi guards under US command sodomized 15 and 16 year old boys, in front of other prisoners (in some cases relatives of the boys), to "interrogate" them (and the other prisoners).

Let me say that again:  THEY SODOMIZED CHILDREN.

Aren't you PROUD of our military, out there defending civilization?  If it wasn't Sy Hersh saying it, I wouldn't believe it.

But wait, it gets better:  It seems that this was condoned, even AUTHORIZED, by persons such as General Karpinski (the General in charge of the prisons), and Donald Rumsfeld himself.  Odds are, the president knew...and if he didn't, he does now, and he hasn't fired Rumsfeld.

If General Patton were alive today, he'd shoot the whole lot of them, himself.

But it gets even better...the New Yorker carried this story last week, and the networks won't touch it.  Why not?  This isn't Geraldo Rivera we're talking about...it's one of the most respected reporters, one of the ONLY remaining respected reporters, in America.

Maybe they just don't want to look.  Maybe they're even just a tad ashamed that the war, the war THEY beat the drums for, has come to THIS.

Remember those old history books, the ones that talk about WWII and the Nazis?  Chuck them out, they're obsolete.  We've got our OWN Nazis, now.  

That's the thing about Nazis...they're like cockroaches.  You can stomp them, burn them, poison them...and the pigfuckers just keep coming back.

What's worse is, by the time you see one, there are thousands.

Welcome to the post-American century.  Welcome to the American Empire.

Or kill me.

On the subject of Nazis, I know quite a deal about this, because it's a good thing to know where you come from and about your family history.

My full name is Carl Eric von Kleist the Fourth.

My father is carl Eric von Kleist the Third, and his father is Carl Eric von Kleist the Second.

My grandfather was sent with his elder brother to live in a German Orphanage in Fat City when they were young, sometime in the mid to late thirties, If I recall my dates correctly, because, well, it wasn't a good thing to be against Nazi-ism when the country was run by them.

My family, the German side of my family, was old nobility, and most of the members of it were opposed to Hitler's ideaology.  One of my family members, Ewald von Kleist, was executed as a result of one of the coup attempts against Hitler.

Anouther member of my family, Ewald's cousin, Paul von Kleist, was a Fieldmarschall and Panzer General who was Sacked by Hitler and later died in a Soviet Gulag.  He was anti-Nazi from the beginning, but kept on because he was a brilliant military strategist, though he was sacked and then reinducted into the military once because of doubts about loyalty.

My family came over to this country because it wasn't safe for their children, because Eris knows what the Nazis would have done to them to either influence their parents or if the parents were killed.

Growing up I learned quite a bit about Nazi germany, the things the Nazis did and how they did them, because it's important not to forget horrible things.  I've been asked several times in Junior and High School if I was a Nazi, simply because of my last name being German, and I've launched into some rather scathing verbal assaults that got me expelled once or twice over it.  One time I was asked if I was a Nazi because someone had read about either Ewald, his son, or Paul in a book on Nazi-ism and Germany and by happenstance happened to be going to scool with a great-great-nephew of the two.  (I'm reasonably sure it's great great nephew.  I'll have to ask my uncle when I get up.  Though I'm pretty sure he'll just roll his eyes at me and call me stupid.)

I think learning about my family's history was a big part of what made me so cynical and jaded so young.  I'm extremely desensitized to violence, to such a degree that my mother, who does Clinical Assessment, was at one time worried I was Sociopathic.  And while I'm desensitized, it's more of in a, "So what else is new?  Kid shot kid to death over candy bar.  We're humans.  Been doing it a long time, mate," instead of a, "Who gives a shit," way.

It doesn't suprise me in the least that this kind of crap happened (and as for those who think the Holocaust never happened, I hope to meet each and every one of you alone in a dark alley some day, as I have a sword with your name on it.  And barring the dark alley and the sword, after 7 years of Tae Kwan Doe, 4 or Karate and 2 of Aikido, I'm fairly sure that if I can't correct your views verbally, I can knock some sense into you, or out of you, as the case may be), and am no way suprised that it's happening again.

People wonder how the hell crap like what happens in Israel and Palestine every day can occur, and now it's happening to us:  We're creating such a hatred and fear and loathing of a certain group of people that of course when you take a group of people in that small division that we've created this hatred of, take away all power from them, and them put people in charge of them with absolute power over their lives.  Of course they're going to do this sort of sick, horrible crap to them.  What kind of idiot would expect them not to?

I guess Rumsfield and others never read that study done by Princton.

Of course, Rumsfield was ordering it!  What kind of man is this, that he is in government?

Well, there is one thing that holds true.

Human stupidity will never cease to amaze me.

And sorry I kind of took a while to get where I was going.

[eighteen buddha strike]

For once, Confusio, I find that your post goes against your namesake and it actually makes a great deal of sense.

When I was a kid, there were a lot of rumors floating around about my grandfather on my fathers side (Zahn) because they knew he was a pilot, but they werent sure for which side.

So when I took my trip to germany four years ago, to visit my father (who is an expatriated american), I queried him on it.

Turned out my mothers side of the family was wrong, and my grandfather was apparently some kind a crazy man with a short guy complex that turned him into a bad-ass (guess he got into lots of fights with australians, over stupid shit.)

I'm not really going anywhere with this story, its just the first thing that came to mind.