Is the USA turning into Another Nazi Germany?
I can imagine someone saying this in Germany in the 1930’s. This is how it starts. We in America just go about our everyday lives, if you are part of mainstream America. If you aren’t, you are left wondering from day to day how and when things are going to get worse. But then, you tell yourself that there’s only so far they can go with eroding the rights and liberties of a minority. Then you read something like this...
After a gay-themed exhibit at a Tampa-area public library prompted complaints in early June, Hillsborough County, Florida, commissioners adopted a policy June 15 to “abstain from acknowledging, promoting, or participating” in any gay pride recognition or events. The board passed the proposal 5-1 after minimal discussion, despite many pleas from gay-rights advocates during an earlier public comment period, the June 16 St. Petersburg Times reported. [...]
County attorneys questioned Commissioner Ronda Storms on whether the new policy banned exhibits of books on gay issues or books by gay authors at libraries, but Storms replied only that the language was clear. To a question about gay student groups using library meeting rooms, Storms answered, “We’re not saying that because of your sexual orientation you can’t come into the library.” (source)
No one thinks anything of it because, after all, we are only talking about some gays who want to actually take pride in themselves. America goes on without noticing, or caring.
I’m left wondering if this is what happened in Germany. Here in America we have some truly very scary people. All you have to do to realize this is to read this blog, which has turned into something much darker than I would like. I apologize for that. I too sometimes hate coming here because I know it is dark. My writing is a direct reflection of my feelings. I don’t hide what I’m feeling and I don’t bullshit around the issues. If I feel like crap, I’m going to say that.
But all of that aside, aside from what I think is so important - my feelings, what really is worrying me is the apathy in America towards gay and lesbian citizens. America, this has happened before. Gay and lesbian citizens in America today are the Jews in Germany, seventy years ago. Don’t believe me? Read that last sentence again: “We’re not saying that because of your sexual orientation you can’t come into the library.” That will come, in time. And by the time it comes, our government will have become a theocracy, and your chance to speak up against the movement will have come and past.
Think about it. I’m not a Jew and I wasn’t in Nazi Germany seventy years ago, but this guy was...
One of our neighbors is moving. I’ve been in this neighborhood for about six years now, but didn’t really know them very well at all - just waves and nods, mostly.
So I heard the moving van pull up this morning. When I got home this evening I happened to spy my neighbor (he’s like 85 years old - I don’t know exactly, but he’s old, talks and moves very slowly) standing on the sidewalk next to the van. I walked over and shook his hand, and we started talking. I asked him where he was moving, and he said, “Back to Germany.”
I had been stationed in Germany for two years while in the military, so I lit up, and commented about how beautiful the country was, and inquired if he was going back because he missed it.
“No,” he answered me. “I’m going back because I’ve seen this before.” He then commenced to explain that when he was a kid, he watched with his family in fear as Hitler’s government committed atrocity after atrocity, and no one was willing to say anything. He said the news refused to question the government, and the ones who did were not in the newspaper business much longer. He said good neighbors, people he had known all his life, turned against his family and other Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority “as if they were starved for it” (his words). (source)
And here I have been wondering if I’m still a good American, contemplating on leaving my country. There have been others just like me, in the past.
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Remember the play, Martin Sherman’s "Bent?" Seems to me that we have a good model for what it could be like in the not too distant future.
http://www.kdhx.org/reviews/bent.html
As well, in the last few weeks, I have looked at:
Brazil
1984 (1984 version)
Brave New World
We are going into a weird space, folks.
--B.
I'm in 100% agreement. This is just the beginning of the eventual destruction of the United States, and the really scary stuff starts June 23rd, when a little known Federal Statute goes into effect (google § 2257) that will effectively shut down at least 50% of the current online porn websites. The Republikkklans are very crafty; I've got to hand them that. Start with porn and work youselves up from there. All in the name of protecting families and "saving the children".
First they block porn websites/producers who cannot legally provide proof of age documenation for all models depicted in any and all images. Once they've got that under their belts (no pun intended) then they go after ALL pornographic images and speech.
Next stage is to outlaw political speech - anything that may counter the official party line, anything that brings into question what the current administration or its Religious Psycho Nutjob backers are doing. One party state with sham "elections". Presidential term limits rescinded from the Bill of Rights because after all, we're in a time of war and we need a strong Commander-in-Chief to lead the country (forgive me while I go puke).
Of course, by the time this happens our prisons are full to overflowing with "offenders". Time to build detention camps! But wait, they turn out to be a huge drain on the finances of the Reichstag...er U.S. Government. Let's just turn the existing ones into death camps. Problem solved. Takes care of a multitude of problems! Gets rid of the gays, the non-right-wing-extremist Christians and in short anyone whom the state now declares sub-human or "an enemy of the State" (essentially anyone who isn't a rich, white, straight "Christian" republikkklan).
But wait! Think of all those heathen countries out there that are still waiting to hear the true word of Jesus! Let the tanks roll and the bombs drop, baby!
By now the rest of the world has mobilized against what used to be the freedom loving United States and they rise up and while each country alone may not have the power to do it alone, together they present a formidable army that even the former U.S. (now "Jesusland") has no chance against and they smack us back into the stone age. The Jesusland is conquered, occupied, the camps liberated, and all land and holdings divided among the occupying countries. And you know the saddest thing? All the fundie nutjobs will be standing there wondering why there was no rapture, why their blessed savior didn't come down from the heavens and save their sorry asses from the madness they themselves started. GAME OVER. (blink, blink, blink...)
There are so many out there DJ, I wouldn't know where to begin. I would go to any good sized book store and look in the history section. You will be amazed at how many.
Human beings are very adaptable to their surrounding's. When one policy gets put in place, we accept that, and go on, no matter what that policy is. In the case of things such as the Patriot Act, we may not like that, but most of us go on about our everyday lives. It doesn't seem to bother us that at any given point, the US Government can know with ease what we are reading, and who we are talking too. This is a huge invasion of personal privacy and, in my opinion, it will lead to an invasion of personal freedom. Do you really think they are collecting all this information just for the fun of it?
These are the people we, the American voters, put in power to make us "feel safe". If they are willing to label people as terrorists without even giving them a trial (Guantanamo Bay), and they find that acceptable, do you really think they care that much about our individual personal freedom?
Add to that an unpopular minority (the last election was won by getting religious conservatives to the polls to keep the unpopular minority of gay citizens from being able to marry the people we love), who the Bush Administration has no problem playing political football with, and you have the beginning of what happened in Nazi Germany.
If people don't take notice of this, we deserve what we get. People can like or hate gays and lesbians. My point is that there is something much larger than the issue of gay and lesbian citizens here. We are talking about the erosion of our basic liberties. Once gays and lesbians are fully marginalized from society, do you really think they will stop with our group? They didn't in Nazi Germany. They won't here.
The only people in america that are truly free and able to have the american dream are straight people who have the same veiws as our government,and if you disagree with what they think is the norm then you will be banned from having any rights at all,free speech goes out the window when you are gay,i agree with bill,one day we will be banned from from most public places because we are gay,if the stupidity does not stop,if we allow people to ban books and keep us from having free speech then what rights will we have in the future?
I just read something about this today in a newsletter that showed up at the Center! I've been thinking about this for awhile now - I wish I knew more about the history of Nazi Germany so I could be more knowledgable when talking about this issue. I'll have to pick up a book. Know of any good ones?