German esteem builder backfires

Hitler really laid his dreck on thick.

Read Mein Kampf years ago. I think Hitler thought in such trite and vulgar images and metaphors (unlike Goebbels).

You said that "The wave basically says that (almost) nobody is immune against that kind of propaganda."

People will believe most anything if those around them do so. Goebbels pointed out that people do not believe and idea true for rational reasons but by repetition, that is, indoctrination. An old adage is that "humans are not rational but rationalizing". Another way to put it is "A person cannot be reasoned out of something he was not reasoned into."

A great many people carefully pointed out what the Nazis were doing back when it was not suicide to do so. Some years ago I spent some time on Ernst Junger (umlaut u) but found "On the Marble Cliffs" either obvious or inaccessible in English. I hear it is remarkable in German. My German is poor.

It was unfortunate for so many Germans that critical thinking is not preferred by most people over emotional conviction. I am a little bit of a student of those times and find them enlightening about my own nature, about human nature. I think people will believe anything whatever.

Ok, dissolve your armed forces immediately. Ban the police, the firefighters and teamwork in offices. Don´t allow people to found families, since all these are in a way collectivist - just like a nation.

You are part of the whole. Be it your co-workers, your family, your platoon or the army, your colleagues at work or simply your fellow citizens. You contribute to their (and thus your) failure or success.

If you haven´t understood the message yet, then I suggest you to emigrate or walk on a mountain where you can live fully independant from others.

"Balanced matter? You hopefully aren´t saying that we are showing the Nazi history too negative?? What was good between 1933-45???"

Not at all. History is best remembered in the form of facts. Speculation on what caused the facts is useful, but facts count.

It is true the the victors get to write history, but after the research must drift towards the facts.

So to sift the speculation from the facts is key. I have studied history all my life and there is one thing I have found to be true, the best you get is a timeline- what is filled in between the time lines and the background information must be factual. People get all emotional about historical matters when what is needed is truthful accounting of what happened when. The why and wherefore are matters left to speculation & opinion.

All I am saying really is that it is now possible for the humblest person to read any number of web-sites on the time period 1933-1945 in Europe. What is missing is that in teaching in public schools, here as well as there that more often than not, no one teaches the difference between fact and opinion.

all these are in a way collectivist

Except for the notion of "teamwork" in the office--which I would gladly see disappear--they aren't, or don't have to be.

The U.S. military consists of independent individuals who have voluntarily chosen armed service as a career. They are not there because they have been drafted by force, nor because they have been coaxed into joining by collectivist propaganda. They are there because they know freedom is worth defending--and freedom, by the way, is the very opposite of collectivist rule.

American police officers are also independent individuals, who know that crime is wrong and have decided to make their living by putting this conviction into action. Unlike the police employed by some other governments, they are not there to enforce the will of some tyrant claiming to represent the collective, nor some tyrannical jumble of laws passed by a bureaucracy in the name of the collective.

An American firefighter is an independent individual too; nothing demonstrated this fact clearer than the heroism of New York City firemen on 9/11/01. In a kind of emergency no one had ever seen before and thus no one had a chance to prepare them for, they did not wait around helplessly to be given orders by their superiors, nor did they ask for a meeting to be convened where they would collectively decide what was to be done. Each of them made his independent judgment of what was the right thing to do, and did it.

A well-functioning family is one whose members see and respect each other as individuals. Saying "Honey, would you be so kind as to do this for me?" affirms an atmosphere of mutual good will, while demanding that "You must do this for the family!!" only leads to mutual resentment.

And as for a nation--well, America is THE nation of independent individuals!

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