Friday, October 5, 2007

Mick Arran Thinks You're A Nazi

Over at Comments from Left Field, Mick Arran has a post that attempts to liken the US population at large to the Germans who were complicit with the government of Nazi Germany.

His basis for this claim? Americans obey rules, for one:

“The Germans are an orderly nation, a nation that believes in rules. It was against the rules to disobey the government.”

Well, so are we. Travel writer Bill Bryson was born in Iowa but spent the first 20 years of his adult life in England. When he returned to the States to live after his long exile, one of the first things he noticed was the almost Germanic American addiction to following rules. He noted, partly in shock and partly with amusement, that the hotel in which he and his family stayed the first few days of their return had an indoor swimming pool and on the walls in several prominent places were placed rules for the use of the pool - 23 of them - and they were vigorously enforced by the lifeguards. He couldn’t imagine such a thing happening in Britain.

Never mind that America was based on the principle of Rule of Law instead of the rule of a man. Apparently, this philosophy - that America pioneered - is evidence that we now abide by the rule of one man: Bushitler. This is an awfully interesting logical jump.

In another section, he explains in traditional, tired anti-government speech that we are all forced to abide by our government out of fear that they might arrest us or send us to Git'mo.

They have thrown innocent men and women into torture camps in Cuba and elsewhere, but most of them are foreigners and we’re not, so we keep our mouths shut.

Well, lets consider that for a moment. Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay houses about 650 detainees. Seems significant, right? Seems like, statistically speaking, if you say something bad about the government you're going to get send there so fast your head will spin, right? Because its happening all around you, right?

The prison camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau killed a minimum of 2.5 million people. Its purpose was unequivocally to exterminate people.

How many executions have taken place at Guantanamo? How many furnaces do they have to burn the bodies of the untermensch? How many are being starved against their will and worked to death? How many have been warehoused with the sole purpose of the decimation of their race?

Oh yeah. None, none, none, and none. Someone is engaging in fearmongering. But its not the same people who are telling you about this, or this, or even allowing you to hear about things like this. I'm perplexed as to how our government is stifling dissent by encouraging dissent against that exact thing that Mick thinks Bushitler is.

Who exactly is marketing fear, at this point? The left or the right?

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