June 11, 2004
MEANWHILE, THE OTHER SIDE STILL HATES AMERIKA...:
Is U.S. like Germany of the '30s? (ANDREW GREELEY, June 11, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)
I can understand, my German friend said, why Germans voted for Hitler in 1933 -- though he did not receive a majority of the vote. The Weimar Republic was weak and incompetent. The Great Depression had ruined the nation's war-devastated economy. People were bitter because they thought their leaders had betrayed them in the war. They wanted revenge for the humiliation of Versailles. Hitler promised strong leadership and a new beginning. But why did they continue to support that group of crazy drug addicts, thugs, killers and madmen?The historical question remains. I leave aside the question of the guilt of the whole German people (a judgment beyond my competence because I am not God) and ask what explanations might account for what happened. Hitler turned the German economy around in short order. He was crazy, of course, a demagogic mystic sensitive to aspirations of the German spirit. He appealed skillfully to the dark side of the German heritage. Anti-Semitism was strong in Germany, as it was in most European countries, but not violent until Hitler manipulated it. He stirred up the memories of historic German military accomplishments and identified himself with Frederick the Great -- thus placating the Prussian ethos of the German army. He promised glory to a nation still smarting from the disaster of 1918. Germany was emerging from the ashes, strong and triumphant once again. He also took control of the police apparatus. The military might have been able to dump him till 1937. After that he was firmly in power. The path lay open to holocaust.
Can this model be useful to understand how contemporary America is engaged in a criminally unjust war that has turned much of the world against it, a war in which torture and murder have become routine? Has the combination of the World Trade Center attack and a president who believes his instructions come from God unleashed the dark side of the American heritage?
What is this dark side?
Iraqi President Thanks U.S., Promises Progress: The interim leader tells the G-8 summit that his nation is committed to democracy. Bush, Chirac clash over the role of NATO in the country. (Edwin Chen and Mary Curtius, June 10, 2004, LA Times)
Iraqi interim President Ghazi Ajil Yawer thanked the American people Wednesday for their sacrifices and said his country was "moving in … steady steps" toward a free and democratic nation, one that he said would help spread stability in the Middle East."We are working with all our hearts to make sure that all these sacrifices of the Iraqis, as well as our friends in the coalition," will not be wasted, said Yawer, appearing for the first time with President Bush.
What more do we really need to say than that the Reverend Greeley's vision of "justice" requires that Iraq be governed by Saddam Hussein rather than that a war, unpopular with Europeans, be fought to replace him with a democracy. WWII was "unjust" in precisely the same way, the Euros just happened to be the ones we liberated in that instance. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 11, 2004 5:42 PM
As a Catholic, I know I should wish no ill on Greeley or his fellow travelers like Drinan; yet when those two pass into death (and whatever lies beyond for them -- I certainly don't know), I look forward to their fade into obscurity with a fervor I daresay they could not match in their wildest rantings about Bush.
Posted by: Chris at June 11, 2004 6:17 PM". . . torture and murder have become routine. . ."
Sheesh.
Of course, he can't mean torture and murder by the likes of Nick Berg's killers. I assume he means torture and murder as a routine practice of the U.S. Military, proven by Abu Ghraib, which probably only confirmed his prexistent, righteous belief that it's all part and parcel of a "criminally unjust" war.
I guess he also believes that the U.S. Military is torturing and murdering on a scale to outstrips Saddam, at least on a moral level.
I'm always floored by this kind of astonishing, incandescent jackassery. And unbelievable moral vanity.
Posted by: Twn at June 11, 2004 6:58 PMAndrew Greeley has become politically unhinged over the last decade or so. He used to be pretty level-headed but he was completely in the tank for Bill Clinton (as asides in many of his 1990's novels make painfully clear) and, withal, he's a classic Irish Chicago Democrat Republican-hater - even during his best writing period in the 1980's he couldn't let a novel go by without taking at least one dig at the GOP, though those digs have been a lot nastier in recent years.
Posted by: Joe at June 11, 2004 7:10 PMI was going to say 'sheesh,' twn.
Aside from the psychotic description of the US in 2004, Greeley is shaky about what the Nazis were about as well.
Which goes to show, I guess, that you shouldn't take your history lessons from trashy novelists.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at June 11, 2004 8:13 PMOmigosh Harry, I've been waiting 20 years for that put-down. Thanks.
Posted by: Jeff at June 11, 2004 9:15 PMRE: Greeley, I am suddenly reminded of the immortal words of another great thinker... the immortal Calvin -
"Every day, I am forced to add yet another name to the list of people who just piss me off!!"
Posted by: Andrew X at June 11, 2004 9:18 PMY'know, Harry, I'm a masochist. What about Nazism -- aside from the glorification of the state and the genocide -- did Greeley leave out?
Oh, oh! I know! How Nazism was actually a secret plot to reverse the Reformation? To kill all of the atheists and Jews on the Continent, so that only Christians of one stripe or another would live there? Please, do tell.
Posted by: Chris at June 11, 2004 11:53 PMNaziism promised all things to all men -- Jews and Slavs excepted.
Most people tend to think of it as a party of big business, which it was. But many of the voters who voted Nazi were small shopkeepers who hated (frequently but not exclusively Jewish) department stores, and they thought Hitler was promising to use state power to protect them. Which he was.
It is not surprising that in electoral politics a politican who can manage to promise all things to all men will do well. It worked for Reagan.
But before Orrin goes off and says I'm comparing Reagan to Hitler as well as to Hiss, that's not the point.
However phony Reagan's promises were, they were not delivered as part of a package that required his partisans to maim and rob and murder some other faction.
The Germans bought the whole package.
It's not immoral to vote for a man who promises to use state power to protect your livelihood. But it is if you have to also go along with mass murder.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at June 15, 2004 3:13 AMYou want the state to engage in the mass murder of Muslims to protect your security.
Posted by: oj at June 15, 2004 7:39 AM