Don't say another Goddamn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say ANYTHING else - ONE word - I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the Master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this Fear Engine will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming -as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of NOTHING will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark world will begin. I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth.
(
Polly Carbonate,
Wed 5 Sep 2007, 5:42,
archived)
Over the next decades, a sentiment took root that contended that if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be accommodated, then the carnage and the destruction of then-recent memory of World War I could be avoided.
It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else’s problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.
There was a strange innocence about the world. Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator’s reaction in September of 1939 upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed:
“Lord, if only I had talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided!”
I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Today — another enemy, a different kind of enemy — has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history’s lessons.
(It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else’s problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.
There was a strange innocence about the world. Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator’s reaction in September of 1939 upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed:
“Lord, if only I had talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided!”
I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Today — another enemy, a different kind of enemy — has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history’s lessons.
Tahkcalb ω∞ for sigs,
Wed 5 Sep 2007, 5:44,
archived)
Anyone else here not a racist, but wishes the Nazis had won?
Theirs was a truly effective fascist government that took a nation on its knees from a depression and turned it into a military, technological and economic powerhouse within the space of thirty years.
It was a social experiment in the way that many reformed or new nations are. America was an experiment in democracy and (eventually) egalitarianism. The Soviet Union was an experiment in Communism. Nazi Germany was the grandest experiment of them all: a rejection of the gentle side of man and a wholehearted pursuit of our more teutonic side: The glorification of the strong, the self-sufficient, and the dominant. It was to be the beginning of a bolder and more uncompromising global civilization that would bring discipline where before there was only coddling; that would harden the soft, and that would not be afraid to say that equality means equal opportunities, not that all men regardless of education or skill are inherently equal to one another. It was a call out to all men to transcend their passive, mediocre existances and aspire to become the heroic and unstoppable species that mankind always had the potential to become.
Nazi Germany was the combined hopes, dreams and ambitions of all who dared to dominate; but in the end, these dreams were quashed by weak, subversive men who would rather hold their superiors back rather than attempt to catch up.
(Theirs was a truly effective fascist government that took a nation on its knees from a depression and turned it into a military, technological and economic powerhouse within the space of thirty years.
It was a social experiment in the way that many reformed or new nations are. America was an experiment in democracy and (eventually) egalitarianism. The Soviet Union was an experiment in Communism. Nazi Germany was the grandest experiment of them all: a rejection of the gentle side of man and a wholehearted pursuit of our more teutonic side: The glorification of the strong, the self-sufficient, and the dominant. It was to be the beginning of a bolder and more uncompromising global civilization that would bring discipline where before there was only coddling; that would harden the soft, and that would not be afraid to say that equality means equal opportunities, not that all men regardless of education or skill are inherently equal to one another. It was a call out to all men to transcend their passive, mediocre existances and aspire to become the heroic and unstoppable species that mankind always had the potential to become.
Nazi Germany was the combined hopes, dreams and ambitions of all who dared to dominate; but in the end, these dreams were quashed by weak, subversive men who would rather hold their superiors back rather than attempt to catch up.
Polly Carbonate,
Wed 5 Sep 2007, 5:47,
archived)
As for George's mother, she was hardly to be persuaded from staying in the country with the child. She went twice a week, to make sure that all went well. Henriette and she lived with the child's picture before them; they spent their time sewing on caps and underwear--all covered with laces and frills and pink and blue ribbons. Every day, when George came home from his work, he found some new article completed, and was ravished by the scent of some new kind of sachet powder. What a lucky man he was!
You would think he must have been the happiest man in the whole city of Paris. But George, alas, had to pay the penalty for his early sins. There was, for instance, the deception he had practiced upon his friend, away back in the early days. Now he had friends of his own, and he could not keep these friends from visiting him; and so he was unquiet with the fear that some one of them might play upon him the same vile trick. Even in the midst of his radiant happiness, when he knew that Henriette was hanging upon his every word, trembling with delight when she heard his latchkey in the door--still he could not drive away the horrible thought that perhaps all this might be deception.
(You would think he must have been the happiest man in the whole city of Paris. But George, alas, had to pay the penalty for his early sins. There was, for instance, the deception he had practiced upon his friend, away back in the early days. Now he had friends of his own, and he could not keep these friends from visiting him; and so he was unquiet with the fear that some one of them might play upon him the same vile trick. Even in the midst of his radiant happiness, when he knew that Henriette was hanging upon his every word, trembling with delight when she heard his latchkey in the door--still he could not drive away the horrible thought that perhaps all this might be deception.
Tahkcalb ω∞ for sigs,
Wed 5 Sep 2007, 5:50,
archived)