by Doly » Tue 14 Mar 2006, 08:33:11
The quotes on the site "They thought they were free" are chilling. Especially if you do the little exercise of changing Nazi for neocon, German for American, and put the dates so they are in the 21st century. See what the best bits would look like:
One had no time to think. There was so much going on.
Neocons gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.
Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic American" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
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.
Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none.
In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to you colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist".
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 Muslims in 2013 had come immediately after the "Support our troops" stickers on the windows of non-Muslim shops in 2003. (Note: the stickers mentioned in the original text said "German firm". Hardly anything one would complain about, right?) 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.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying "Muslim swine," collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in – your nation, your people – is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
P. N. spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the neocons attacked the communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a communist, and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Muslims, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked science, and he was a scientist, and he did something - but then it was too late. (In the original text, the last straw is the Church, but that isn't going to happen with neocons, is it? The rest I left as they were, just changing Jews for Muslims.)
You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in America, could not have imagined.
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done ( for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or "adjust" your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Americans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know
Once the war began, resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was "defeatism."
Once the war began, the government could do anything "necessary" to win it; so it was with the "final solution" of the Muslim problem, which the neocons always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the neocons, until war and its "necessities" gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Bush would help the Muslims were wrong. And the people in America who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on America losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it.