Who knew so many of us are "good Germans"?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

who just want to fall in line and submit to oppression and surveillance in order to protect the Homeland? I ask people who excuse this activity - how would you feel if you knew that every letter that went through the US Postal service went through a US Censor desk and that the person at that desk knew every thing that you bought, your tax returns, your love letters, your prescriptions, your political donations, etc.? Would you feel violated? Would you feel like that little creepy government appointee needed or deserved to know everything about you?

[mike_c]

1. I think about 35 percent of the U.S. population would agree...

...that such intrusive monitoring is a good thing. They would assert that it makes them feel safer, and besides, if you don't have anything to hide, why would you worry that the gov't wants to monitor your communications? That's why the term "sheeple," while perhaps politically incorrect, is an entirely accurate characterization.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

3. I think it's closer to 30%

But what about the rest of us? I am beginning to realize that that 30% we are discussing are the true "radicals" in our society. They organize, they unite, they buy media, they influence, they intimidate, they subjugate the America we thought we lived in.

[Sydnie]

18. I think they think looking at OUR stuff is ok but

not looking at theirs! They don't think they are being spied on ... it's just everybody that is not them that is being spied on. That's what they think is good. Do it to them and you would hear them scream from sea to shining sea.

[MannyGoldstein]

20. Sadly, I Think It's More Like 50%+

I suspect that more than half of us want intrusive monitoring, which is why Rove sent Bush out swinging on this, rather than backing off. The "good guys" have a fair amount of educating to do if we want to win on this.

As to the German thing - I've spent a fair amount of time studying how the most open society in Europe turned into Nazi Germany, and my conclusion is that it can definitely happen here. We got lucky in the 1930s - Roosevelt saved us from extremism in extreme times. We may not be so lucky again.

[TheWatcher]

25. Everything about your post is correct except ONE thing.

It HAS happened here.

And it continues to happen.

And it is getting worse by the day.

[Protagoras]

2. We thought we were free.

It can't happen here.

Liberty ebbs by degrees. http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/01/40083.shtml

There are a great many "true believers" out there.

[SPKrazy]

4. I tried to express similar sentiments to a co-worker

and they just seemed to become apaplectic about the idea that we (USA) could even be compared to Nazi Germany in the 1930's (my comparison to her) saying "don't you know that Americans would never stand for that?"

I told her that Americans barely even vote, much less would stand up to fascism as evidenced by the current situation!

[bpilgrim]

5. i am not surprised

lots of folks think we are some how special in this world, the neoCONs know better.

peace

[sandnsea]

6. Maybe people think it's already that way

Go online, pay some money, stick in a name, and up pops all their legal, economic and other info. Political donations are online already. Maybe people think we lost our privacy a long time ago so what's the deal anyway. :shrug:

I really don't know.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. People are fucking clueless about the constitution

all across the board- from the way the bill of rights has been systematically dismantled over the past few decades (first under the aegis of the "drug war", and now the "war on terror") to the separation of church and state..

it's depressing.

[Poppyseedman]

8. I think you analogy is totally off base.

I agree the most "good Germans" did basically nothing concerning oppression and surveillance in order to protect the Homeland,

But to make an analogy comparing americans who think it's much to do about nothing, though ignorance or stupidity, that the government has the ability to spy on us and does, to the "good germans" who knew what was happening to their fellow human being systematically murdered, starved, degraded in the most inhuman ways possible. To compare to two is an insult .

There is a vast difference between being too naive to care about what your government is doing and watching your government systematically slaughter millions of people.

And yes, I do feel very violated that uncle sammy has the ability to do all the things you stated and should not do them unless I am a threat to national security with a court order to boot.

[f-bush]

9. Good Reply

I was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1957 just 12 years after the war had ended. I remember well, the stories my mom had passed on to me about the horrors of the Hitler regime.

There is a vast difference. The people in Nazi couldn't really do anything about it, once they knew the magnitude of what had happened it was too late. Disagree at that time, you were marked for death.

We, on the other hand have hindsight to teach us a thing or two, plus live in a different system with a much greater ability to dissent.

BTW please don't lump an entire nationality into one basket...it's just the type of stuff we deplore the RW doing! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

[Poppyseedman]

11. I understand that not all German people actively supported

the Nazi's. Many gave their lives trying to stop the madness. I never intended to impugn the entire German nationality.

[f-bush]

21. Thanks

I knew you didn't...but I just get a bit nervous when people start lumping all those of one nationality, gender, race or sexual orientation into one assumptive outcome.-Happy New Year

[bpilgrim]

12. Springtime for Hitler

we are well on our way, wake up & never forget.

RESIST the beginnings & Consider the END.

peace

[BillZBubb]

16. You are making a historical error.

The slaughter of the millions did not occur until WELL AFTER Hitler had assumed power. The original post is correct, the German people let their freedom's and rights be stripped away one after another for spurious reasons (Reichstag fire, communist threat, economic depression, to regain German honor, etc). Once their rights were gone, then the mass murders commenced.

So, Americans are like "good Germans" after all. We are early in the abuse of power, just as the Germans were in the 1930's. Americans are allowing a phony threat be used to erode many of our liberties. And don't forget a solid majority of our fellow citizens supported Busholini's slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis. Sure that's not on Hitler's scale just yet, but it's a start.

If this course is allowed to proceed much further, we are setting the table for a police state with capabilities far beyond those of Nazi Germany.

[FreedomAngel82]

19. Yes

If you haven't try to find the book "Night" by Elie Wiesel. You can for sure find it in your local library. I found it when I was doing a report on him. He was a holocaust survivor and a nobel peace prize winner. I also remember seeing a documentary on the History channel about Hitler and one woman was in her eighties or early nineties I'd say and she said they didn't know what was going on since Hitler controlled the media (sounds familiar?). Nothing he didn't want in the public got out. And if you already don't know look up the White Rose Society. Whenever anyone tries to fear me into being quiet I remember them and get my courage.

[DivinBreuvage]

26. You also are making a historical error.

2000s America and 1930s Germany are two different nations, two different cultures. Americans have a 229 year cultural legacy of democratic republicanism, which itself is founded upon centuries of English constitutional monarchy, parliamentary government, and a fairly steady effort to curb the British monarch from attaining the excesses that absolutists in places like France and the German states enjoyed. Germany in the 1930s had no such cultural legacy. The moist-eyed romanticism in which some posters enshrine Weimar is unhistorical drama; it was simply a bad time and place to launch an experiment in parliamentary democracy, and the majority of Germans didn't particularly care for the Weimar Republic and weren't particularly unhappy to see it go. It's also true that most Germans weren't admirers of the pre-1933 Hitler, but the varying strains of authoritarian conservatism espoused by him and other rightist nationalists resonated strongly in some segments of German society. From this standpoint Americans are actually a good deal more guilty than the Germans, since our entire national mythos is built upon the concepts of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and so forth.

Furthermore, why are we always "good Germans"? Why not good Russians, or good Frenchmen, or good Rwandans, or good Salvadoreans, or good Japanese, or good Romans, or good Egyptians, or any other of the multitude of peoples that have oppressed and murdered humanity en masse down through the ages? The constant conflation of anything one dislikes politically to the unique horrors of the Nazis is a slap in the face to everyone who suffered under that regime. The incidents you folks always refer to with such histrionic excitement are mere superficialities, no more characteristic of Nazism than of any other despotic government.

No, we're good Americans and we always have been. We were good Americans when we were killing the Indians, we were good Americans when we were buying and selling slaves, and we were good Americans during 100 years of Jim Crow and lyncherdom. You don't have to drag swastikas into it.

[BillZBubb]

29. Sorry, but you are making several errors

First you badly misinterpretted my post. I was saying that the original proposition wasn't "totally" wrong as the person I responded to claimed. His point was Americans disregard what's going on from being naive unlike the Germans. That is not so. The Germans in the 1930's ignored things for many reasons just as Americans do today.

And you actually agree with me in your statement "Americans are actually a good deal more guilty than the Germans, since our entire national mythos is built upon the concepts of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and so forth." We should know better having the historical examples that exist--but we don't.

Perhaps you dislike the "good German" tag. Well, I wasn't addressing that. I was correcting the post that said Americans are nothing like the Germans under Hitler. In fact, people everywhere are susceptible to right wing authoritarianism. The Germans of the 1930's just happen to be an obvious and well known example. I see no problem in pointing out that the Germans then allowed Hitler to grab dictatorial powers without much of a whimper. Swastikas aren't the issue--I didn't say Americans are Nazis. Right wing authoritarianism and its acceptance is the issue.

[kath]

17. You definitely need to read this.

and speaking of "They Thought They Were Free", referred to in post #2 above":

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/12/20/12819/467
"Slouching Toward Kristallnacht"

very chilling, but very important.

[Tsiyu]

10. My new Meme?

"I am so glad ** did that, because when Democrats regain control - and we will - we plan to use this program to root out any and every Fascist and racist and homophobe and sexist and greedy and Fundy freak on the planet and then we'll put them in prison for being evil incarnate."

Some Americans are IDIOTS

[NMMNG]

22. I like your new meme

But to heck with the prison. Why pay to house, feed and clothe them, as well as provide them health care? I say ship them all to a desert island where they can harm nobody except themselves. Let them live off the land and see if they really enjoy life in their fundie-only world.

[NNN0LHI]

13. I wasn't surprised at all n/t

[omega minimo]

14. The punks

:yourock:


BECOME THE MEDIA

[Jara sang]

15. hear hear

I've had three threads deleted today. All of them spoke the truth.

[mopaul]

23. i'm sure the fuhrer knows what's best for us

[Arianrhod]

24. Too abstract for most people.

Ask them instead how they would react if a stranger walked into their house and went through their bedroom drawers. Then remind them that, under current law, any police officer can do that virtually at will.

Americans respond with outrage only when something is perceived to affect them personally. It's one of the major character flaws of our nation, IMO.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

27. I'm not going to condemn Germans

but I will offer this:

An early supporter of Hitler, by 1934 Niemöller had come to oppose the Nazis, and it was largely his high connections to influential and wealthy businessmen that saved him until 1939, after which he was imprisoned, eventually at Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. He survived to be a leading voice of penance and reconciliation for the German people after World War II. His poem is well-known, frequently quoted, and is a popular model for describing the phenomenon of social chaos, as it often begins with specific and targeted fear and hatred which soon escalates out of control.

When they came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

[rucky]

28. I'm eating Sauerkraut tomorrow...

does that make me a Good German?

[Deja Q]

30. When does a parallel become purport or invalid?

That aside, they want to keep an eye on people. To maintain control and to weed out the subverts.

And, at least right now, to gossip on the 'net is okay, just so long as you don't sign up for organized groups. We're still here.