Reply #126: wow- lots of interesting posts, and my 2 cents...

[kineneb]

(and some really good writing)... wishing I could use words like you folks... ah, the joys of being a musician and at the same time a visual thinker... shall I draw/paint a picture perhaps? (Goya or Picasso come to mind right now, or for music- Mozart's Requiem)

now onto my comments...

...on the Nazi analogy: same intent/trajectory, different situation

...no, we are not Weimar Germany with incredible inflation (yet), no we don't have the middle class rioting in the streets- shit, the US middle class doesn't even know how to riot... but don't we already fit Mussolini's definition of fascism? (government+corporations)

...of course history does not repeat exactly, but like Santayana says , if we don't learn from the past we will repeat it (my addition: ...in new and creative ways)...

...we are becoming "like" Good Germans: we are the "Good Americans" who think that US domestic/foreign policies are positive, instead realizing we are being screwed... the rest of the world is aware of what the Gov. has done in "our name" and with our tax dollars, and it ain't very "good" at all... and we have often turned a blind eye towards their pain...(recommended reading: Chalmers Johnson's Blowback series)

...to those who shout others down whether here or in the real world, I don't put them on "ignore", I just ignore them... sometimes I feel sorry for them, but I don't hate them... hate takes energy- the opposite of love is not hate but apathy, a total lack of caring... I have spent a lifetime learning not to hate my relatives; people I don't know don't bother me, no matter what they say...

...on the sophistry of some... different people have different levels of insight... many will never "get it" and some will only partially "get it"... others chose not to see what is going on, because it would destroy the internal world they have built... some of us have also spent a lifetime watching what goes on around us, so as to jump before the manure hits... some of the reaction is ingrained and some learned through the school of hard knocks... some people really are shallow...

sorry for the rambling, arendt, it was a good essay, and some of the replies were good too...

(and thank goodness for spellcheck)