Yes, Subotai Bahadur has beaten us to the punch and there isn’t anything we disagree with in what he writes.
This constant “assuming the best” and giving the National Socialist Ogabe the benefit of the doubt is a loser’s game, and it’s so pig ignorant as to make us conclude that either those on the right using that approach are as dumb as a jar of spit or they’re trying to cling to the hope that things are not, in fact, as bad as they indisputably are. As we are pretty certain about the IQs of those on our side, at least most of them, holding on to the “glass is half full” view, we lean towards the latter.
As Subotai pointed out with example after example after example, and still he’s only scratching the surface, really, every single overreach, every single act of outlaw, un-Constitutional arrogance, every single action of his points in the same direction: Total tyranny and the abolition of a Constitution that he not only doesn’t honor, protect and defend as is the duty of his office, he actively abhors, defies and disdains it.
It is not that we don’t understand the reluctance of kinder, gentler souls to look the facts in the eyes and reach the inevitable conclusions, because we do. Where we’re headed is a scary place, and to even suspect such arrogant, hateful, tyrannical goals of anybody is not an easy thing to do.
It’s not like there is no historical precedent for otherwise good and decent people to refuse to admit what was going on before their very eyes, simply because of how horrible and unthinkable the reality of it all was. Just ask the millions of Germans who, while certainly not Nazis, didn’t jump up and grab the emergency brakes. They weren’t cowards, they weren’t idiots, they just could not reconcile what was going on before their eyes with what every decent human being wants and, indeed, needs the world to be. That some things are simply not done, that some things simply “cannot happen here.”
Yet they did.
At some point, you have to face the facts and accept them for what they are. At some point you have to draw the only logical conclusions and act accordingly, no matter how painful that realization may be, because if you don’t, then it will be too late when reality turns really ugly and hits you square in the face.
Choosing to do nothing is also a choice. And choosing to do nothing until it’s too late to do anything is a much worse burden to live with than any action now can ever be.
The “Quiet Germans” of the 20s and 30s are mostly gone now, but if you think that a day went by in the rest of their lives, the ones who were lucky enough to survive, in which they didn’t regret every single thing they didn’t do back when things could still be done, then you don’t know any of them. I do, or did, and they all felt that way. “If only, if only, could have, would have, should have…”
They, too, were just assuming the best, avoiding the ugly truth. No different from the “he’s not all that bad, he’s just incompetent, he’s just in over his head” crowd in our nation today. Not bad people.
And again, lest anybody who wasn’t paying attention think that I’m making up excuses for the Germans who did march along merrily, lit up by the unholy fire of Naziism, I’m NOT. Those assholes deserved all they got, and I’ll forever hate the fact that they didn’t all get killed. But they weren’t really all that numerous. Yes, the NSDAP won the election back during the Machtergreifung — another useful reminder to those who don’t know history and thus assert that the Democrat Socialist Fascists and their figurehead are different because they were “democratically elected”. So was the NSDAP — but they didn’t win by much. The majority of Germans did not support them in the election that brought them to power. The NSDAP only got 37.3%. That’s about a third. In a parliamentary system, that can be enough, though. All you need is to build a coalition with enough other parties willing to “compromise” and think “he’s not all that bad, we can work with him, he only wants what’s best for the country.”
The McCain Gentry GOP of 1932, you might call them. And no, we don’t apologize for that comparison, because it is not only apt, it is wholly accurate.
They, too, refused to see what was going on in front of their faces because they just couldn’t find it in themselves to be honest with themselves. But it was right there. The bastard wrote a fucking BOOK about it. Not Dreams From My Father, he gave it a less gay title (but not by much), but still the comparison holds. It was right there, but nobody liked to admit it because, well, that’s just crazy, you know. Extremist. Unhelpful. Visigoth!
A reincarnation of the Visigoths would have been a Sunday picnic for Germany compared to what they ended up with as a result of their willful ignorance of facts.
And so we say to the “Quiet Germans” of the GOP today: Open your eyes while opening them still might make a difference. As someone else said a long time ago about Ogabe, and do I ever wish that I’d said it, “if Obama really was out to destroy the United States, abolish the Constitution and replace everything with a socialist fascist tyranny, WHAT WOULD HE HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY?”
We understand how it’s hard to reach that conclusion, because what then becomes necessary is almost too horrible to contemplate, it simply should not ever come to that, but, and again we quote, only this time I know who came up with the quote, all of us know that:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,
That’s the road we’re headed down right now, and it doesn’t exactly fill my heart with joy.
So what am I calling for? What should be done? I hate to say it, but I don’t know. These are uncharted waters and I am no Jefferson.
All I know is that it’s time for all of us to stop deluding ourselves, to stop pretending that what’s happening isn’t happening, to keep up the good fight, to keep the pressure up and to do all that is within our powers to pull the brake in November. That won’t solve our problem, but it might just give us enough time to work on a solution that won’t involve what I think that we all fear.
Would a massive defeat of the NSDAP in 1932 have averted WWII and all of its horrors? I don’t know. Nobody ever will. But what I do know is that it would have bought some precious time and, maybe, the brush with disaster would have taught everybody enough to fix what was broken.
No matter what, it couldn’t have been worse than what actually followed.
All I DO know is that this movie is an old one, we’ve watched it all before, and if we do NOTHING, then the end is pretty obvious too.
So let’s not do nothing. Let’s not pretend that history never repeats itself. Let’s not refuse to acknowledge the evidence in front of our eyes. Let’s not be ostriches, sticking our heads in the bush because if we can’t see the threat, then the threat might not be able to see us.
Let’s face it head on, come what may. Let our only assumption be that the facts, as are plainly clear, tell us exactly what they’re telling us. Let us not be “Quiet Germans”, lest we end up with a lifetime of guilt due to our inaction.
Let’s misbehave.
Thatisall.