The boiled frog - Alarmists or visionaries?

[Mnemosyne]

I shuddered the first time I read these passages. Am I am “alarmist” or simply seeing with clarity?

I understand why some here get defensive when this regime is compared to the Nazis or our citizenry are compared to the Germans at the beginning of the Third Reich.

Many just cannot bring themselves to imagine that our "leaders", as horrific as they have been, could take us to such an extreme. Many simply don't want to believe they are blind. They would rather continue to believe America is immune.

We are not. The longer it takes the majority to realize what is happening, the harder it will be to end it and turn back. It is much easier to tear out a sapling than a grown oak.

This regime is looking to dominate the world militarily and economically. They are in several countries already causing massive devastation and suffering and have plans to take it to more countries. How is this any different than Hitler’s dreams? Other than their capabilities far exceed Hitler's.

I am in the process of watching the old Capra military propaganda film WWII “Why We Fight”. It is chilling in the comparisons to today and the neocon agenda. I recently re-watched “Judgement at Nuremberg” – also chilling.


snip>

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

snip

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to – to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked – if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in "43" had come immediately after the "German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in "33". But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

snip>

much more at link

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html


A previous post about this:

A couple of really good comments and info here though a short thread.

NoMoreMyths Sat Dec-17-05 03:11 PM
Original message
They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5621341


Flame away – I’ve got my suit on!:hi: