The Dots Could Connect Themselves
Recently, I watched two documentaries on Netflix. One was on the trial of Adolph Eichmann. Eichmann was one of Hitler’s right-hand men and hid in northern Germany posing as a forest ranger until he arranged for transportation to Argentina.
Argentina became a haven for thousands of ex-Nazis after World War Two. The Perons weren’t exactly lovers of the American style of government. If Argentina were to ever embrace free market capitalism, it could become an incredible country to live in. Until then, it is a financial government default waiting to happen.
Not to ruin the movie because you should watch it, Israel organized an effort to kidnap Eichmann and bring him back to Israel for a trial. It was quite amazing to me the lengths that the Israeli government went to in order to try and stay objective and give Eichmann a fair trial.
Several news organizations and intellectuals opined that Israel didn’t have the legal standing to try Eichmann. Because he was kidnapped, he should be released!
Basically, Eichmann tried to show he was just a cog in the machine following orders. The fact that he was trained to follow orders was echoed by one of the Mossad agents that kidnapped him! He was found guilty and executed.
I also watched a documentary with a different perspective. Most of us have seen movie after movie, oral history after oral history, or people who were persecuted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. While very uncomfortable for them to talk about and very uncomfortable for us to hear, we have heard it and it was the Eichmann trial that allowed that to happen. The documentary I watched interviewed German SS officers that survived the war, people who were children of officers, and people who lived near the camps or worked at the camps. It is called Final Account.
When I was a member of the National World War Two Museum board, one thing I learned was the importance of oral histories. The museum spends a lot of effort collecting them. That generation is dying, quickly. Steven Spielberg and others have expended a lot of resources to get oral histories of people that survived the Shoah. These oral histories are critical and important because historians eons from now will be able to go through them and get insights and learn how to tell the story to people from their generation.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a video oral history of the participants at the Battle of Thermopylae?
I have not seen a lot of documentaries or oral histories about the Germans. So, this was interesting to me. Not because I am empathetic, or even sympathetic. It fills in the blanks to help you comprehend history in sum.
I also look to these sorts of things to see if there are patterns of behavior today. Clearly, the Nazis are extreme and when you compare people to Nazis, you dishonor the memory of those that suffered and were executed by the Nazis.
But, humans are human. We see right before our eyes governments today operating that are horrible to their people. When we look to Asia and see the way the Chinese and North Korean government treats their people, you can’t help think that some of the same societal undercurrents happened there, and are happening there, that happened in 1933 Germany.
One person in the documentary said that as soon as the Nazis took power, they imprisoned and executed anyone who would dissent or that would pose a problem for them. The people that were left were scared.
They then started educating the kids. As a kid, you want to belong to something. That’s how street gangs in the US recruit kids.
I recalled my classes with Professor Ron Burt of Chicago Booth. He did studies on corporations and how “guacamole, margarita drinking cults” grew inside companies along with what happened when an employee bucked them. When you consider some of those concepts, you can see how bad things can happen when humanity runs off the rails.
As I listened to the people talk, I realized, they all knew what was going on. A few people were still in denial but they were in the minority. I think they knew what was going on but intellectually didn’t want to admit or comprehend that humans were capable of engaging in that sort of behavior against their fellow innocent man.
I wonder about different movements in America today. One thing the totalitarians get you to do is to suspend your ability to say what you are really thinking. For example, they will paint the wall white and tell you it’s black. They will force you to submit until you look right at that white wall and say, “It’s black”.
It’s how people can look at drag queens dancing in a school children’s class or at the local library and think that they are understanding and empathetic without realizing how much damage they are doing to the children.
I have seen intellectuals call for re-education camps for people like me. Being born white, and a white male, I am automatically categorized as a racist by many people on the left wing. They are steps away from being something very different than a compassionate objective free thinking human.
When I look at things like the Twitter Files being released, I see many that don’t want to believe it. They want to rationalize it. They are still calling the white wall black. Yoel Roth’s actions when he was in charge at Twitter aren’t that different from totalitarian government officials. Do you think if China fell the communists that might be tried in an objective court of law would take responsibility? Or, would they deflect just like Mr. Roth? Even worse, Roth is trying to claim he is a victim simply because he is gay. He’s interjecting it to deflect. It’s disgusting.
When people get caught with their hands dirty, they beg for innocence or understanding and say they were just following orders or they didn’t know. They deflect responsibility. Then, they lawyer up and use the benefit of that they are a US citizen with rights to objective jurisprudence and do all they can to stay out of jail.
That is unless you are a person like Jon Corzine or Hillary Clinton. Then, the scales of justice turn a blind eye and you get to walk free among us.
Some people tell themselves lies. All of a sudden
and are MAGA-loving right-wing conservatives?!I think the left wing has gone 100 miles too far. It’s not dissimilar from some of the things the right wing did in the early 1990s or what McCarthy did in the 1950s. The left is making it impossible to speak out, or you run the risk of losing your ability to earn a living.
The more you let your mind imagine the most outlandish unrealistic things that might have happened at places like Twitter, at FTX, at the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CDC, the SEC, in several of our major universities, in city governments like Chicago or a lot of other institutions in America in time as the truth is revealed the craziest stuff becomes true.
People thought they were civilized in 1930. I am sure the Cubans thought they were civilized in 1959. In 1999, I am sure the Venezuelans thought they were civilized too.
Predictably, Sam Bankman Fried wanted relief from his bail, and because he is a "vegan" with ADD shouldn't be in jail. Ha!
Senator McCarthy's tactics may have been crude, but the fact that there were communists all through the federal government is now beyond doubt.